3.  On the next day a deputation of freeholders from the county of Norfolk, and soon afterwards similar deputations from the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Herts, and Buckingham, waited with written addresses upon Fairfax.  They lamented that now, when the war with the king was concluded, peace had not brought with it the blessings, the promise of which by the parliament had induced them to submit to the evils and privations of war; a disappointment that could be attributed only to the obstinacy with which certain individuals clung to the emoluments of office

[Footnote 1:  Rushworth, vi. 518.  Whitelock, 251.  Holles, 252.]

[Footnote 2:  Nottingham’s Letter in the Lords’ Journals, ix. 253.]

and the monopoly of power.  To Fairfax, therefore, under God, they appealed to become the saviour of his country, to be the mediator between it and the two houses.  With this view, let him keep his army together, till he had brought the incendiaries to condign punishment, and extorted full redress of the grievances so severely felt both by the army and the people.[1]

The chiefs, however, who now ruled at Westminster, were not the men to surrender without a struggle.  They submitted, indeed, to pass a few ordinances calculated to give satisfaction, but these were combined with others which displayed a fixed determination not to succumb to the dictates of a mutinous soldiery.  A committee was established with power to raise forces for the defence of the nation:  the favourite general Skippon was appointed to provide for the safety of the capital; and the most positive orders were sent to Fairfax not to suffer any one of the corps under his command to approach within forty miles of London.  Every day the contest assumed a more threatening aspect.  A succession of petitions, remonstrances, and declarations issued from the pens of Ireton and Lambert, guided, it was believed, by the hand of Cromwell.  In addition to their former demands, it was required that all capitulations granted by military commanders during the war should be observed; that a time[a] should be fixed for the termination of the present parliament; that the House of Commons should be purged of every individual disqualified by preceding ordinances;

[Footnote 1:  Lords’ Journals, 260, 263, 277.  Holles says that these petitions were drawn by Cromwell, and sent into the counties for subscriptions.—­Holles, 256.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1647.  June 14.]

and, in particular, that eleven of its members, comprising Holles, Glyn, Stapleton, Clotworthy, and Waller, the chief leaders of the Presbyterian party, and members of the committee at Derby House, should be excluded, till they had been tried by due course of law for the offence of endeavouring to commit the army with the parliament.  To give weight to these demands, Fairfax, who seems to have acted as the mere organ of the council of officers,[1] marched successively to St. Alban’s, to Watford, and to Uxbridge.[a]