Charles was a prisoner at Carisbrooke, more strictly guarded than ever before, but not any less dangerous to Parliament or the disrupting forces which stood for Parliament. In spite of everything they still tried to come to an agreement with him, for the confusion of the kingdom was beyond words, beyond any one man's brain to grasp and cope with, and all turned to the King and the tradition behind the King as the one stable thing in a whirl of chaos.

Charles thought that they, traitors and rebels as they were, were speeding to their own doom. Outwardly he played with them as he had done before; he referred himself, he said, wholly to them. Meanwhile he was sowing the seeds of another Civil War.

He had come to an agreement with the Scots whereby they were to unite with the English royalists against the Parliament, and he on his side was to suppress Sectaries and Independents and to establish presbytery for three years, himself retaining the Anglican form of worship. This agreement was signed secretly, wrapped in lead, and buried in the garden of Carisbrooke Castle.

Royalist risings broke out all over the country, particularly in Wales; mutinies were frequent in the still undisbanded, unpaid army; the struggle between Presbyterian and Independent was as sharp as it had ever been. Hamilton triumphed over the Argyll faction in the Scottish Parliament, raised an army 40,000 strong, and prepared to march across the Border "to deliver the King from Sectaries." Part of the fleet had revolted, gone to Holland, fetched the young Prince of Wales and Rupert, and was buccaneering round Yarmouth Roads. In Ireland the Marquess of Ormonde and the papal Nuncio were coming to some pact to unite against the Parliament, and the feeling of the sheer people of England was veering against the austere rule of the Puritan and coming again to the old known and tried idea of Kingship. "Why not," they asked, "a good peace with His Majesty?"

Cromwell and a few others knew why not; because the King was utterly impossible to deal with; because he did not admit that he, the King, could be dealt with, made party to a bargain or an agreement, like an ordinary man.

But in the minds of the common people, Charles did not get the blame nor they the credit of this attitude of his. Cromwell in particular had lost much of his prestige; the zealots blamed him for his conferences with the King, the moderates because they had not succeeded. He brought about meetings between the leaders of the two factions, Presbyterians and Independents, but quite uselessly—neither would yield a jot. Then the extreme men of the Parliament and the extreme men of the army were gotten together by his care to discuss the desperate state of affairs.

This conference resolved itself into a bitter and academic dispute on the various forms of government, each man backing himself by manifold quotations from Scripture.

"Wherefore," cried Cromwell, starting up impatiently, "do you argue which is best—monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy—when you are come here to find a remedy for the present evils?"

Thereat they began to reply together, tediously and idly, and Cromwell picked up the cushion from the chair on which he sat and hurled it at Ludlow's head, and before it could be flung back to him he ran down the stairs, thus ending the conference.

Soon after, the army came together at Windsor and, with prayers and tears and exhortations, besought God to tell them for what mistreading or fault all these turmoils and distresses had come upon them.

And the conclusion of these three days of mystic exaltation was that God was punishing them for their dealings with Charles Stewart, who was henceforth to be no more considered or dealt with, but treated as a delinquent and man of blood who would be, in good time, made to answer for his sins to men before he went to answer for them to God.

The situation was a paradox. The Scots were invading the kingdom to restore Charles and to force the Covenant on England; these two matters were no less the object of the parliamentary majority, yet they were bound to withstand Hamilton, for his victory would mean their own utter overthrow.

To further complicate the situation, Langdale and the English Cavaliers, joined with Hamilton, abhorred the Covenant, and were fighting not merely for the re-establishment of the monarchy but the re-establishment of the Church of England.

It was obvious, even to the most hopeful, that only the sword could cut these tangles; it was obvious, even to the most hesitating, that the Scots must be driven back over their own Border.

Cromwell, who had been on the edge of impeachment, who had many eager foes now in Parliament and army, was called forth again at the supreme moment.

He was sent to South Wales, crushed the rebellion there, took Pembroke Castle, heard Hamilton had crossed the Border, turned northwards and, by July, was in Leicestershire. By the middle of August he had joined General Lambert between Leeds and York.

There his scouts brought him news that Hamilton and Langdale had effected a juncture and were marching for London.

"If," said Cromwell, "they reach London, then goodnight to us, for the King will be master for all in all, and all the blood and bitterness will have been for naught."

There was nothing but him and his force to stay them. He had, perhaps, eight thousand men; they, twenty-one thousand, or near it. The weather was tumultuous, stormy; torrents of rain fell, the upland fells were almost impassable from mud and bog. Cromwell had brought his army by long and arduous marches from Wales; many of them were barefoot, many in rags. None of them had yet received the months of arrears of pay which had been so long in dispute. Plunder was forbidden them; they were there, like the hosts of Joshua, to fight for the Lord, and for nothing else.

My Lord Duke, with his great straggling army, came over the open heaths as far as Preston and Wigan, no colours displayed because of the wind, no tents nor fires at night because of the wind and the rain; so they marched, a weary troop, neither well-disciplined nor well-generaled, and soon to face those troops which Oliver Cromwell had made the best in the world. But there was with them neither hesitation nor dismay, for half of them were Scots, and Langdale's men were of the same breed as Cromwell's, and would fight as well and endure as stubbornly.

Cromwell came to Clitheroe and lay in the house of a Mr. Sherburn, a Papist, at Stonyhurst. The next day was Wednesday, and still raining; the weather, the soldiers said, "was as fearful a marvel as the hideous sight of English fighting English on English earth"; the sky was one colour with earth, heavy, dun; the beaten heath, the broken bushes dripped with moisture, the water ran in rivulets through the soaked earth. As the rain ceased for a while the wind would rise, sweeping strongly across the open spaces.

Ashton marched to Whalley, other troops of dragoons to Clitheroe, Cromwell advanced towards Preston. On the other side my Lord Duke advanced, also, hardly knowing where, in the rain and wind, on the undulating ground of hillocks and hollows, his army lay, or how and where it was available.

Sir Marmaduke Langdale was near Langdridge Chapel, on Preston Moor, the other side of the Ribble. Four miles away my lord the Duke, who was at Darwen, the south side of the river too, where there should have been a ford, but was not, so swollen was the tide with the mighty rains. My Lord Duke passed the bridge with most of his brigades and sent Lord Middleton with a large portion of the cavalry to Wigan.

Meanwhile, through the rain and the confusion, stumbling over the incredibly rough ground, a forlorn of horse and foot, commanded by Major Hodgson and Major Rounal, came upon Sir Marmaduke and his three thousand English.

The Scots, themselves confused, thinking it only an attack of Lancaster Presbyterians, did not support Langdale, who complained that he had not even enough powder; but he fought, he and his men, like heroes, against forces more than double their number—against the Ironsides, for four hours, always in the wind and wet, on the rough ground. Then such as was left of them gave way and fell back on Preston; some of the infantry surrendered, some of the horse escaped north to join Munro.

Meanwhile, Cromwell had swept Hamilton and Baillie back across the Darwen, back across the Ribble, had captured both bridges and driven my lord towards Preston town. Three times in his retreat my lord turned round to face his enemies, crying out for "King Charles!" Three times he repulsed the troops pursuing him, and the third time he drove them far back and, escaping from them, swam the river and joined Lieutenant-General Baillie where he had enclosed himself on the top of a hill.

Night fell and the battle was stayed; all were wet, weary, hungry, haggled; the Parliamentarians, the victors, not the less exhausted, but with fire in their hearts and hymns of praise on their lips. Cromwell wrote to "the Committee of Lancashire sitting at Manchester" his account of the day's fight, dispatched it, prayed, and got into the saddle again.

It was still foul weather, wind, rain, miles of muddy heath, hillocks, hollows now stained with blood and scattered with bodies, men, and horses, dead and dying.

The Duke of Hamilton's forces fought all that day and the next, routed again and again, rallied again and again; always the rain, the wind, the muddy heath, the low clouds, always the soldiers growing fainter and wearier. Beaten from the bridge of Ribble, falling back, a drumless march on Wigan Moor, leaving the ammunition to the enemy, falling farther back on to Wigan town, where they thought to make some stand, but decided not to, with skirmishes of detachments at Redbank where the Scots nearly worsted Colonel Pride at Ribble Bridge, and where Middleton (the weather, always foul, bringing confusion and fatigue) missed his chief, coming too late. And so it went for three days on the wet Yorkshire heaths, till finally it was over; the fate of King, Church, Constitution, and Covenant was decided. Hamilton and the vanguard of horse rode wearily and aimlessly towards Uttoxeter; Munro and the rearguard straggled back to their own country; a thousand of them were left dead under the rain, trodden into the bloody heath; three thousand of them were made prisoners. And the second Civil War which had flamed up so suddenly and so fiercely was ended.

The Puritans—the patriots—had passed through their darkest hour triumphantly; their ragged, hungry, unpaid soldiers, fighting truly for God and not for pay, had again saved England from the return of the tyrant and his manifold oppressions and confusions.

After the three days' fight was over, Cromwell sat down at Warrington to write to the Speaker of the House of Commons a long account of the rout.

"The Duke," he wrote, "is marching with his remaining horse towards Namptwich.... If I had a thousand horse that could but trot thirty miles, I should not doubt but to give a very good account of them; but truly we are so harassed and haggled out in this business, that we are not able to do more than walk at an easy pace after them."

But whether or no the Puritans were too wearied to pursue their enemies mattered little; the day was decided.

The Duke of Hamilton, wandering vaguely, with fewer and fewer men after him, was finally taken at Uttoxeter, where he surrendered, a sick and broken man.

Cromwell cleared the Border of the remnants of the Scots, retook Berwick and Carlisle, engaged the Argyll faction, now the head of the Government of Scotland, to exclude all royalists from power, and turned back towards England, the foremost man of the moment again, and in the eyes of at least half England, the saviour of the country from the invader.

But if the country was grateful, the Parliament was not. Denzil Holles, fiercest of Presbyterians, rose up at Westminster to lead a party against his enemy Cromwell. The Lords, who had all become royalists, considered whether they should impeach the victorious general; it was noticeable how much bolder they all were when the Independents and their indomitable leader were absent, and how, as the return of the army, strengthened in renown and prestige, drew nearer, they began to cast round for some means of escape from the fact facing them, that when Cromwell reappeared at Westminster he would be absolute master of the political situation, for he had behind him the entire army and they had nothing but the mere unsupported weight of the law.

So sharp was the division and so fierce had party hatred become, that the Presbyterians at Westminster hated the Independents with the army as no Roundhead or Cavalier had ever hated in the first broad division of the war.

Toleration was the watchword of Cromwell and his followers, and no word was more detestable to the Parliament. To mark their loathing of it they passed an ordinance punishing Atheism. Arianism, Socinianism, Quakerism, Arminianism, and Baptists with death.

Meanwhile, Cromwell, looming ever larger in the imaginations of men, was returning triumphant to London. If his fame had been at the lowest when he left for Wales, it was at the highest now. Denzil Holles conceived the idea of meeting material force by moral force; as they had nothing else to oppose to Cromwell they must oppose the King. Charles still remained, in many ways, the hub of the political wheel.

The Parliament must now yield either to him or to the army; they thought they saw their chance with Charles. If terms could be come to with him, and he be installed in London before the army returned, Cromwell would be faced with a situation with which he would probably not be able to cope. He had denounced the King solemnly at the Windsor meeting, therefore Charles, once again in power, could not treat him otherwise than as an enemy.

The vote against further addresses to the King, which Cromwell's eloquence had hurried through the House, was repealed, and parliamentary commissions were sent to the Isle of Wight to open a new treaty with the King.

But they were not prepared to make concessions; the propositions of Uxbridge, of Newcastle, of Oxford, of Hampton Court were offered again and again, fought inch by inch. Charles, too, was still as intractable as ever; the coalition between royalist and Presbyterian seemed doomed to failure; the negotiations were continually ruptured on the subject of Church government. Charles would not forgo his bishops, and the Parliament would not endure them; though each side was desperate, on this point they were firm.

Meanwhile, Cromwell and his Ironsides were coming nearer.