a man who would
go all lengths in favor of that cause which he had espoused. He would
not allow his soldiers to perplex their heads with those subtleties of
fighting by the king's authority against his person, and of obeying his
majesty's commands signified by both houses of parliament: he plainly
told them, that if he met the king in battle, he would fire a pistol in
his face as readily as against any other man. His troop of horse he soon
augmented to a regiment; and he first instituted that discipline, and
inspired that spirit, which rendered the parliamentary armies in the
end victorious. "Your troops," said he to Hambden, according to his own
account,[*] "are most of them old, decayed serving men and tapsters,
and such kind of fellows; the king's forces are composed of gentlemen's
younger sons and persons of good quality. And do you think that the
mean spirits of such base and low fellows as ours will ever be able to
encounter gentlemen, that have honor, and courage, and resolution in
them? You must get men of spirit; and take it not ill that I say, of a
spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go, or else I
am sure you will still be beaten, as you have hitherto been, in every
encounter."

* Conference held at Whitehall.

He did as he proposed. He enlisted the sons of freeholders and farmers.
He carefully invited into his regiment all the zealous fanatics
throughout England. When they were collected in a body, their
enthusiastic spirit still rose to a higher pitch. Their colonel, from
his own natural character, as well as from policy, was sufficiently
inclined to increase the flame. He preached, he prayed, he fought, he
punished, he rewarded. The wild enthusiasm, together with valor and
discipline, still propagated itself; and all men cast their eyes on so
pious and so successful a leader. From low commands, he rose with great
rapidity to be really the first, though in appearance only the second,
in the army. By fraud and violence, he soon rendered himself the first
in the state. In proportion to the increase of his authority, his
talents always seemed to expand themselves; and he displayed every day
new abilities, which had lain dormant till the very emergence by which
they were called forth into action. All Europe stood astonished to see a
nation, so turbulent and unruly, who, for some doubtful encroachments
on their privileges, had dethroned and murdered an excellent prince,
descended from a l