[Footnote 1:  Whitelock, 76.]

[Footnote 2:  Life of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 100.  “The godly of those days, when the colonel embraced their party, would not allow him to be religious, because his hair was not in their cut, nor his words in their phrase.”—­Ibid.  The names were first given a little before the king left Whitehall.—­Clarendon, i. 339.]

command, but to those who were most willing and able to raise men; and the men themselves, who were generally ill paid, and who considered their services as voluntary, often defeated the best-concerted plans, by their refusal to march from their homes, or their repugnance to obey some particular officer, or their disapproval of the projected expedition.  To enforce discipline was dangerous; and both the king and the parliament found themselves compelled to entreat or connive, where they ought to have employed authority and punishment.  The command of the royal army was intrusted to the earl of Lindsey, of the parliamentary forces to the earl of Essex, each of whom owed the distinction to the experience which he was supposed to have acquired in foreign service.  But such experience afforded little benefit.  The passions of the combatants despised the cool calculations of military prudence; a new system of warfare was necessarily generated; and men of talents and ambition quickly acquired that knowledge which was best adapted to the quality of the troops and to the nature of the contest.

Charles, having left Nottingham, proceeded to Shrewsbury, collecting reinforcements, and receiving voluntary contributions on his march.  Half-way between Stafford and Wellington he halted the army, and placing himself in the centre, solemnly declared in the presence of Almighty God that he had no other design, that he felt no other wish, than to maintain. the Protestant faith, to govern according to law, and to observe all the statutes enacted in parliament.  Should he fail in any one of these particulars, he renounced all claim to assistance from man, or protection from God; but as long as he remained faithful to his promise, he hoped for cheerful aid from his subjects, and was confident of obtaining the blessing of Heaven.  This solemn and affecting protestation being circulated through the kingdom, gave a new stimulus to the exertions of his friends; but it was soon opposed by a most extraordinary declaration on the part of[a] the parliament; that it was the real intention of the king to satisfy the demands of the papists by altering the national religion, and the rapacity of the Cavaliers by giving up to them the plunder of the metropolis; and that, to prevent the accomplishment of so wicked a design, the two houses had resolved to enter into a solemn covenant with God, to defend his truth at the hazard of their lives, to associate with the well-affected in London and the rest of the kingdom, and to request the aid of their Scottish brethren, whose liberties and religion were equally at stake.[1]