the bayonet, was mostly done by the pikemen who were the tallest and strongest men; the pikes from their length, from fifteen to eighteen feet, and weight, requiring men of some strength and height to handle them efficiently.1 I had an impression from all the authorities I had before consulted that the pikemen formed only about a third part of every regiment of foot: but it appears from the two following minutes that the pikemen in a regiment of foot 1000 strong were to the musketeers as 400 to 600, or as two-fifths to three-fifths: "That 600 musquets now at Liverpool be presently issued out for the arming of the regiment of Col. Tothill." "That Mr. Webster be sent unto to be here to-morrow in the afternoon to speak with the Council concerning the furnishing of 400 pikes for the arming of Col. Tothill's regiment.'

2

What, in addition to the want of the bayonet, rendered the musket a particularly ineffective weapon at that time, was the fact that, the use of wadding for the ball not being understood, the soldier could not shoot effectually with his piece inclined below a horizontal position. Gustavus Adolphus indeed had introduced the use of the cartridge, but it was not adopted generally till near a century after.3 That the cartridge was not introduced during this war appears from one of the usual articles of the surrender of places, by which it is stipulated that the soldiers may depart "with their arms and baggage, with drums beating and colours flying, matches lighted at both ends, and ball in their mouths, as they usually are wont to march."

1 Mémoires de Montecuculi, i. 2, 16; Grove's Military Antiquities, vol. i. pp. 132, 133.

2 Order Book of the Council of State, 13th March, 1648. MS. State Paper Office.

3 Historical Record of the First Regiment of Foot, in Records of the British Army, printed by authority, compiled by Richard Cannon, Esq., AdjutantGeneral's Office, Horse Guards, London, 1847.

This clearly shows that cartridges were not used, and that the ball was put loose or separately into the gun; in which case the mouth was found a convenient magazine. And at the time of which we write, about one in sixty-eight was the proportion of flintlocks to matchlocks, as appears from a despatch of Cromwell from Linlithgow, in 1651, in which he states that they have left in store "2030 muskets, whereof 30 snaphances," or flintlocks.' such circumstances it is manifest that nearly all the work had to be done by the cavalry and pikemen.

Under

1 Cromwell to the Lord President of the Council of State, 26th July, 1651.

CHAPTER II.

THE Council of State occupied themselves a good deal in regard to what they termed "divers dangerous books printed and published;" the multitude and constant succession of which "dangerous books," implied a spirit of discontent existing of a kind and degree which whether really formidable to their power or not was at least sufficient to render them uneasy. They appear to have been as much afraid of what they call "libellous books" as Archbishop Laud and the High Commission were some ten years before. And not without cause, for though the government of the Council of State was, as compared with the government of Laud and Charles's council-an able, a great, and a formidable tyranny, it was a tyranny still, that would not tolerate opposition, or even criticism; not merely in regard to its acts but also to its opinions. The Council of State were in this but the representatives of the body to which they owed their existence, the Long Parliament, which from an early period had evinced an abundantly intolerant and tyrannical spirit. In a paper indorsed by Lord Clarendon "Skippon's Relation of some of the Extravagances of the Parliament," it is related that about the month of August 1646, at Henley-on-Thames a woman having taken notice of the unwonted taxations imposed on her and others by the Parliament, expressed

1 Order Book of the Council of State, 7th May, 1649. MS. State Paper Office.

order "That Lt. Col. John Lilburne be committed prisoner to the Tower upon suspicion of high treason for being the author of a scandalous and seditious book intituled 'England's New Chains Discovered.'" 1

2

In order to have some insight into the character of John Lilburne as well as into that "complication of interest upon which “Mr. Milton" was appointed by the Council of State to make some observations, it will be necessary to go back for a few years to the time when Cromwell first as a captain of a troop and then as a colonel of a regiment of horse beat up his drums for the ardent and energetic souls lodged in strong and active bodies who had long been groaning under a most grievous spiritual as well as civil tyranny. In the beginning of his career one of his officers was James Berry, who had been a clerk of ironworks, and was an old and dear friend of Richard Baxter. When Cromwell lay at Cambridge with "that famous troop which he began his army with," Berry and his other officers proposed, says, Baxter, "to make their troop a gathered church, and they all subscribed an invitation to

3

1 Order Book of the Council of State, 28th March, 1649. MS. State Paper Office.

2 This was the official phrase of that time thus: "That George Lyon, ensign to Capt. Anthony Stampe have a warrant issued out unto him for the beating up of drums for the gathering recruits for the said captain's company, and that Mr. Walley be ordered to ship such men as the said Lyon shall conduct to the waterside to Derry to the rest of his company." -Order Book of the Council of State, 6th July, 1649. MS. State Paper Office.

3 Some modern writers say that Berry had been a gardener, but Baxter, who had known him well, and in whose house he had lived, says that Berry,

at the Restoration, was imprisoned in Scarborough Castle, "but being released, he became a gardener, and lived in a safer state than in all his greatness." -The Life of the Rev. Mr. Richard Baxter, faithfully published from his own original MS., by Matthew Sylvester, folio, London, 1696, part i. p. 58. In another place Baxter says, 'James Berry was made Major-General of Worcestershire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, and North Wales; the counties in which he had formerly lived as a servant (a clerk of ironworks). His reign was modest and short; but hated and scorned by the gentry that had known his inferiority: so that it had been better for him to have chosen a stranger place."-Ibid., pp. 97, 98.

me to be their pastor, and sent it to me at Coventry : I sent them a denial." Baxter then says that afterwards meeting Cromwell at Leicester, Cromwell expostulated with him for refusing their proposal; and adds: "These very men that then invited me to be their pastor were the men that afterwards headed much of the army, and some of them were the forwardest in all our changes; which made me wish that I had gone among them, however it had been interpreted, for then all the fire was in one spark."

Baxter heard nothing more of Cromwell and his old friend Berry for about two years. After the battle of Naseby he paid a visit to the army of the Parliament and he then found that Cromwell's chief favourites among the officers held opinions both political and religious which greatly shocked him. What," they said, were the lords of England but William the Conqueror's colonels? or the barons but his majors? or the knights but his captains?"2 They most honoured the Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians; but Cromwell and his Council joined themselves to no party, but were for the liberty of all. Baxter says he perceived that those they did commonly and bitterly speak against were the Scots, and with them all Presbyterians but especially the ministers, and also the committees of the several counties. There were, however, some officers who were still orthodox according to Baxter's

1 Baxter's Autobiography, p. 51. 2 Hobbes says, "The levelling soldiers, finding that instead of dividing the land at home they were to venture their lives in Ireland, flatly denied to go." Behemoth, part iv., p. 266, London, 1682. But Baxter was much better informed on this matter than Hobbes; and we see that, according

to Baxter, those who were for dividing the land among them were Cromwell's chief favourites among the officers, and not the men upon whom Cromwell fixed the name of Levellers. At the same time, I do not think that Ireton, Ludlow, Blake, Harrison, are to be reckoned in this class.