The reader is aware that the Presbyterians had long viewed the army under Fairfax with peculiar jealousy.  It offered a secure refuge to their religious, and proved the strongest bulwark of their political, opponents.  Under its protection, men were beyond the reach of intolerance.  They prayed and preached as they pleased; the fanaticism of one served to countenance the fanaticism of another; and all, however they might differ in spiritual gifts and theological notions, were bound together by the common profession of godliness, and the common dread of persecution.  Fairfax, though called a Presbyterian, had nothing of that stern, unaccommodating character which then marked the leaders of the party.  In the field he was distinguished by his activity and daring; but the moment his military duties were performed, he relapsed into habits of ease and indolence; and, with the good-nature and the credulity of a child, suffered himself to be guided by the advice or the wishes of

[Footnote 1:  These particulars appear in the correspondence in Clar.  Pap. 221-226; Journals, 19, 69, 193, 199; Commons’, Feb. 25; March 2, 9; May 21.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1647.  May 20.]

those around him—­by his wife, by his companions, and particularly by Cromwell.  That adventurer had equally obtained the confidence of the commander-in-chief and of the common soldier.  Dark, artful, and designing, he governed Fairfax by his suggestions, while he pretended only to second the projects of that general.  Among the privates he appeared as the advocate of liberty and toleration, joined with them in their conventicles, equalled them in the cant of fanaticism, and affected to resent their wrongs as religionists and their privations as soldiers.  To his fellow-officers he lamented the ingratitude and jealousy of the parliament, a court in which experience showed that no man, not even the most meritorious patriot, was secure.  To-day he might be in high favour; tomorrow, at the insidious suggestion of some obscure lawyer or narrow-minded bigot, he might find himself under arrest, and be consigned to the Tower.  That Cromwell already aspired to the eminence to which he afterwards soared, is hardly credible; but that his ambition was awakened, and that he laboured to bring the army into collision with the parliament, was evident to the most careless observer.[1]

To disband that army was now become the main object of the Presbyterian leaders; but they disguised their real motives under the pretence of the national benefit.  The royalists were humbled in the dust; the Scots had departed; and it was time to relieve the country from the charge of supporting a multitude of

[Footnote 1:  As early as Aug. 2, 1648, Huntingdon, the major in his regiment, in his account of Cromwell’s conduct, noticed, that in his chamber at Kingston he said, “What a sway Stapleton and Hollis had heretofore in the kingdom, and he knew nothing to the contrary but that he was as well able to govern the kingdom as either of them.”—­Journals, x. 411.]