Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1111 page)

So, in about nine months, the whole fabric of the civil government was thoroughly overhauled. The King’s one honourable and clever minister, the Earl of Strafford, was sent to the
Tower and at length beheaded. Archbishop
Laud was sent to the Tower. The judges who had twisted the law to please the King were removed, and provision was made against their twisting it in the future. Several new law courts, which had grown up in Tudor times,
were taken away: the power of levying any taxes without full consent of Parliament was taken away; and it was decided that henceforward Parliament should meet at least every three years.

All this was done with the most thundering applause of the nation, from Tweed to Tamar,
from Kent to Cumberland; for, as I have said,
all men were agreed as to the “civil” causes of complaint against their King. But it was another story when questions relating to religion were touched. Only one half of England was Puritan or wished to abolish bishops or
Prayer Book. Three fourths of the House of
Lords and nearly half the House of Commons were against making any such change; and this at once began to give the King “a party” in the State. He meant to use that party not only to save the Church, but also, if possible,
to restore his own “strong government” in civil matters. So things stood in the autumn of 1641; and two events then hurried on the civil war, the King’s visit to Scotland, and a rebellion in Ireland.

Our Parliament men easily guessed that the
King’s visit to Scotland was made in order to see whether, if he had to fight his Parliament,
the Scots would help him. For he gave the
Scots everything that they asked, and showered honours on their leaders; in fact, he appealed to their old jealousy of England. Still he got little or no promise of help there.

To understand the other thing, the Irish rebellion, we must go back a long way. No

English sovereign had seriously tried to
govern
Ireland before the Tudors. The kings had often made grants of Irish land to Englishmen,
who had then gone over there and had, in a few years, become wilder than the Irish themselves.
There was some shadow of English government in Leinster, with a “Lord Deputy” as Governor,
and a sort of Irish Parliament; but,in the fifteenth century, the English territory had shrunk to a very narrow district round Dublin called
“the Pale.” Outside the Pale, it was all broken heads and stolen cows, as it had been for a thousand years. But Henry VIII had taken the task of government in hand, and had tried to turn the wild Irish chiefs into decent
English landowners, who should really come to
Parliament, help the judges in keeping order,
and cultivate their lands properly. He had dissolved the Irish monasteries as he had dissolved the English, and had given their lands to these chiefs. He put down rebellious earls with a very strong hand, and quite successfully.
He had taken the title of “King” of Ireland.
The “Reformation” had been started in Ireland under Edward VI, but there had been little
Reformation for Mary to suppress, and no
“heretics” were burned there. Certainly, until the middle of the sixteenth century, Ireland had shown little affection for Pope or Catholic

faith. But rebellion in some shape remained the one thing that Irish chiefs loved, and it occurred to some of them, especially to one
Shan O’Neill, early in the reign of Elizabeth,
that
a rebellion in the name of religion
would be a much more successful affair than without that name: “England is now Protestant;
therefore let Ireland rise for the Pope,” was
Shan’s idea. Philip of Spain saw a splendid chance (for the Pope and himself) of injuring
Elizabeth by sending aid to Irish-Catholic rebellions; and, from 1570 at least, he continued to do so either secretly or openly until his death. The idea “caught on,” as we should say, with the whole Irish nation, and every one went about shouting “Pope aboo,” “Spain aboo,” and “O’Neil (or Desmond, or some other wild earl) aboo.” Thus England, when she tried to keep order, always appeared to be “persecuting” Catholics in Ireland. But
Elizabeth could not face the frightful cost of keeping order there until the last two years of her reign, when she went to work in earnest and with some success. Usually she had preferred to plant “colonies” of Englishmen upon some Irish districts which had been confiscated after a rebellion. So Munster was “planted,”
1583; so Ulster was planted with Scottish landowners, tradesmen and artisans by James I.

These last were mostly Presbyterians, and made vigorous and successful colonists. But, of course, the Irish landowners, who had rebelled and been turned out, always hoped to recover their land. And the rebellion of 1641 was prompted either by this hope, or by the fear of fresh confiscation.

But to the Puritans in the English Parliament it seemed to be simply a rebellion of the
“wicked Papists,” “probably got up by the
King,” they said, “certainly by the Queen,
in order to give excuse for raising an army to use against the English Parliament.” And,
with this fear in their heads, the leaders of
Parliament were now driven to take steps far beyond any they had intended a year before.
First they brought forward laws for the utter abolition of bishops and all their works; and then laws to transfer the command of the army or militia from the Crown to Parliament.

This last was revolution pure and simple.
No king could agree to this, and so Charles began to set about preparations for war. Large numbers of Members of Parliament came to join him from both houses; but those that remained at Westminster were of course all the more determined to fight.

The words “rebellion,” “treason,” “traitor”
are very ugly words; and traitors in those days

CAVALIERS AND ROUNDHEADS 181

were put to a very ugly death. So, many moderate men, who had hated Charles’s unlawful government, and applauded all the work of this Parliament during its first nine months,
now threw in their lot with the Crown. So did many men who cared nothing for bishops;
Charles was their King, and his flag was flying in the field. There were many men, too, who hated the long sermons and the gloomy nature of the Puritans; for the Puritans objected to country sports, may-poles, dancing, and to lots of innocent amusements. These “Cavaliers” called the Parliament men “Roundheads,” “crop-eared rogues,” and so on; they gave the King an excellent force of cavalry,
in which arm the Parliament was at first weak. The King’s foot-soldiers were mostly
Cornishmen or Welshmen, good fellows to fight, too.

But the Parliament had the richer districts of the kingdom, the South and East; London was in its grip; it had the most of the fleet;
and much the fuller purse. It is a great mistake to imagine that the war was one of gentlemen against merchants and traders. Nearly half the country gentlemen of England were
Puritans, and at first all the leaders on both sides were drawn from the upper classes; later on there were one or two instances, on each side,where men of lesser birth rose to high commands in the armies.

The equipment of each force was much the same; the infantry carried either long clumsy muskets which could shoot about 300 yards at extreme range, or “pikes,” which were straight two-edged knives fastened on to long poles. Each side cast a few light field-guns,
which did little damage; but later on the Parliament cast some heavy siege-guns which really finished the war. Each side had soldiers who had fought in the German wars. Prince Rupert, Sir Jacob Astley, Sir Ralph Hopton for the King; Lord Essex, Lord Manchester, Sir
William Waller, Sir Thomas Fairfax for the
Parliament. The King had perhaps this advantage: when the war began no one had yet dreamed of deposing him, much less of killing him. “Whatever we do, he will still be the King and his sons after him,” was the idea in the minds even of the staunchest of his enemies. So at first Parliament was “afraid of beating the King too much.” But Charles had no need to be afraid of beating his rebels too much.

Once battle was joined, each side displayed the greatest gallantry, chivalry and mercy.
No war was ever fought with so much bloodshed
in
battle and so little cruelty
after
battle.

Except where actual fighting or a siege was going on, civil life was not interrupted. Down to the end of 1643 the advantage was on the whole with the King. Then both men and money began to fail him, and an incomparable leader came to the front for the Parliament in the person of Oliver Cromwell, who was to finish the war and die, ten years later, something very like King of Great Britain.

With what feelings the men in either army must have looked upon each other before the first great battle!

Naked and gray the Cotswolds stand

Beneath the autumn sun,
And the stubble fields on either hand

Where Stour and Avon run,
There is no change in the patient land
That has bred us every one.

She should have passed in cloud and fire

And saved us from this sin
Of war — red war — ‘twixt child and sire,

Household and kith and kin,
In the heart of a sleepy Midland shire,
With the harvest scarcely in.

But there is no change as we meet at last
On the brow-head or the plain,

And the raw astonished ranks stand fast

To slay or to be slain
By the men they knew in the kindly past
That shall never come again —

By the men they met at dance or chase,

In the tavern or the hall,
At the justice-bench and the market-place,

At the cudgel-play or brawl,
Of their own blood and speech and race,
Comrades or neighbours all!

More bitter than death this day must prove

Whichever way it go,
For the brothers of the maids we love

Make ready to lay low
Their sisters’ sweethearts, as we move
Against our dearest foe.

Thank Heaven! At last the trumpets peal

Before our strength gives way.
For King or for the Commonweal —

No matter which they say,
The first dry rattle of new-drawn steel
Changes the world to-day!

The King very nearly got into London, after a fierce drawn battle at Edgehill in Warwickshire, in the autumn of 1642; but the Londoners

turned out in such force for the defence of the city, and looked so grim, that Charles dared not fight his way in. He fell back on Oxford,
and fixed his headquarters there; it was an excellent centre; he meant to move one army up from Yorkshire, another from Cornwall,
and a third from Oxford, and so to crush Parliament between three fires. All 1643 he strove for this, and his generals won victories both in the north and west. But then John
Pym, the statesman who took the lead in Parliament, called in the aid of the Scots. The
Scots agreed to come, but demanded that their “Covenant,” to enforce the Presbyterian
Church on all three kingdoms, should be the price of their coming. In 1644 they came and helped to rout the King’s best army at Marston
Moor, near York.