election. About 140 of them, I find, were reckoned among the "Champions;" and, if these are added to the 250 original members also reckoned as such, the total number of the Champion Commoners will be about 390.1 It must not be supposed that they had all earned this distinction by their habitual presence in the House. Only on one extraordinary occasion since the beginning of the war had as many as 280 been in the House together; very seldom had the attendance exceeded 200; and, practically, the steady attendance throughout the war had been about 100. Employment in the Parliamentary service, in various capacities and various parts of the country, may account for the absence of many; but, on the whole, I fancy that, if England allowed as many as 390 original members and Recruiters together to pass as Champion Commoners at the end of the war, it was by winking hard at the defects of some scores of them. II. Military Champions. Here, from the nature of the case, there was less doubt. In the first place, although the Army had been remodelled in Feb. 1644-5, and the Self-Denying Ordinance had excluded not a few of the officers of the First Parliamentary Army from commands in the New Model, yet the services of these officers, with Essex, Manchester, and Sir William Waller, at their head, were gratefully remembered. Undoubtedly, however, the favourite military heroes of the hour were the chief officers of the victorious New Model, at the head of whom were Fairfax, Cromwell, Skippon, Thomas Hammond, and Ireton. For the names of the Colonels and Majors under these, the reader is referred to our view of the New Model at the time of its formation (antè pp. 326-7). Young Colonel Pickering, there mentioned, had died in Dec. 1645, much lamented; Young Major Bethell, there mentioned, had been killed at the storming of Bristol, Sept. 1645, also much lamented; but, with allowance for the shiftings and promotions caused by these deaths, and by the 1 In Leach's fly-sheet the exact number of Champion Commoners given is 397. Among these he distinguishes the Recruiters from. the original members by printing the names of the Recruiters in italics. In at least eleven cases, however, I find he has put a Recruiter among the original members. Also I am sure, from a minute examination of his list throughout, that he admitted into it, from policy or hurry, a considerable number whose claims were dubious. retirement of several other field-officers, or their transference to garrison-commands, the New Model, after its sixteen months of hard service, remained officered much as at first. While, with this allowance, our former list of the Colonels and Majors of the New Model proper yet stands good, there have to be added, however, the names of a few of the most distinguished military co-operants with the New Model: i.e. of those surviving officers of the old Army, or persons of later appearance, who, though not on our roll of the New Model proper, had yet assisted its operations as outstanding generals of districts or commanders of garrisons. Such were Sir William Brereton, M.P. for Cheshire, and Sir Thomas Middleton, M.P. for Denbighshire, in favour of whom, as well as of Cromwell, the Self-Denying Ordinance had been relaxed, so as to allow their continued generalship in Cheshire and Wales respectively (antè, p. 334, Note); such was General Poyntz, who had been appointed to succeed Lord Ferdinando Fairfax in the chief command of Yorkshire and the North; such were Major-general Massey, who had held independent command in the West (ante, p. 337), and Major-general Browne, who had held similar command in the Midlands; and such also were Colonel Michael Jones (Cheshire), Colonel Mitton (Wales), Colonel John Hutchinson (Governor of Nottingham), Colonel Edmund Ludlow (Governor of Wardour Castle, Wilts), and Colonel Robert Blake (the future Admiral Blake, already famous for his Parliamentarian activity in his native Somersetshire, his active governorship of Taunton, and his two desperate defences of that town against sieges by Lord Goring). Several of these distinguished coöperants with the New Model, as well as several of the chief officers of the New Model itself, had already been honoured by being elected as Recruiters for the House of Commons.1 1 My authorities for this list of the military stars in August 1646, besides those already cited for the New Model at its formation (antè, p. 327, Note) and an imperfect list in Leach's fly-sheet (antè, p. 376, Note) are stray passages in the Lords Journals, in Whitelocke, and in more recent Histories. I think I have picked out the chief coöperants with the New Model, but cannot vouch that I have done so. When one has done one's best, one still stumbles on a Colonel this or a Lieut-colonel that, evidently of some note, perplexing one's lists and allocations. If one were to write out duly the names of all the Englishmen that have been described or pointed to in the last paragraph as the risen stars of the new Parliamentary world of 1646, whether for political reasons or for military reasons, there would be nearly five hundred of them. Now, as History refuses to recollect so many names in one chapter, as the eye almost refuses to see so many stars at once in one sky, it becomes interesting to know which were the super-eminent few, the stars of the highest magnitude. Fortunately, to save the trouble of such an inquiry for ourselves, we have a contemporary specification by no less an authority than the Parliament itself. In December 1645, when Parliament was looking forward, with assured certainty, to the extinction of the few last remains of Royalism, and was preparing Propositions to be submitted to the beaten King, it was anxiously considered, among other things, who were the persons whose deserts had been so paramount that supreme rewards should be conferred upon them, and the King should be asked to do his part by admitting some of them, and promoting others, among the English aristocracy. This was the result: : THE EARL OF ESSEX :-King to be asked to make him a Duke. The Commons had already voted him a pension of £10,000 a year. THE EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND:-To be made a Duke, and provision for him to be considered. THE EARL OF WARWICK (Parliamentary Lord High Admiral) :— To be made a Duke, with provision; but the dukedom to descend to his grandchild, passing over his eldest son, Lord Rich, who had taken the wrong side. THE EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY:-To be made a Duke, and all his debts to the public to be cancelled. THE EARL OF MANCHESTER-To be made a Marquis, and provision to be considered for him. THE EARL OF SALISBURY :-To be made a Marquis. LORD ROBERTS:-To be made an Earl. LORD WHARTON :-To be made an Earl. LORD WILLOUGHBY OF PARHAM :-To be made an Earl. DENZIL HOLLES :-To be made a Viscount. GENERAL SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX :-To be made an English Baron, and an Estate of £5,000 a year in lands to be settled on him and his heirs for ever: his father LORD FERDINANDO FAIRFAX at the same time to be made an English Baron. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL:-To be made an English Baron, and an Estate of £2,500 a year to be settled on him and his heirs for ever. SIR WILLIAM WALLER :-To be made an English Baron, with a like Estate of £2,500 a year. SIR HENRY VANE, SEN.:-To be made an English Baron. As the peerage would descend to his son, SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER, the honour included him. SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG:-£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. SIR PHILIP STAPLETON :-£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. SIR WILLIAM BRERETON :-£1,500 a year to him and his heirs for ever. MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON:-£1,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever.1 Had Pym and Hampden been alive, what would have been the honours voted for them? They had been dead for two years, and the sole honour for Pym had been a vote of £10,000 to pay his debts. It mattered the less because these Dukedoms, Earldoms, Viscountcies, and Baronages were all to remain in nubibus. They were contemplated on the supposition of a direct Peace with the King; and such a peace had not been brought to pass, and had been removed farther off in prospect by the King's escape at the last moment to the Scottish Army. It remained to be seen whether Parliament could arrange any treaty whatever with him in his new circumstances, and, if so, whether it would be worth while to make the proposed new creations of peers and promotions in the peerage a feature of the treaty, or whether it would not be enough for the Commons to make good the honours that were in their own power-viz. the voted estates and pensions. For Essex, who was at the head of the list, the suspense (if he cared about the matter at all) was to be very brief. He died at his house in the Strand, September 14, 1646, without his dukedom, and having received little of his pension. Parliament decreed him a splendid funeral. 1 Commons Journals, Dec. 1, 1645. CHAPTER II. WORK IN PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY DURING THE SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL-THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES-INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT-PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE ARRANGEMENT-THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS: EMINENT RECRUITERS -EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED AND CURBED-NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING AT NEWCASTLE-THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THE SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON: THE NINETEEN PROPOSITIONS-PARLIAMENT AND THE ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZING OF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE: DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON. DURING the sixteen months of those New Model operations in the field which had brought the war so decisively to an end (April 1645-August 1646), there had been a considerable progress in Parliament, in the Westminster Assembly, and in the public mind of England, on the seemingly interminable Church-business and its collaterals. THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES. That the Church of England should be Presbyterian had been formally decided in January 1644-5 (antè, pp. 172— 175). Not even then, however, could the Presbyterians |