fidence appear to have made them so presumptuous that their chief officers could not abstain from some internal dissentions. "There was no good understanding," says Clarendon, "between the officers of the army." The army was mostly composed of Scots; and yet, by Clarendon's testimony, there was a proposal to supersede old David Leslie in the command, and Buckingham, by the same authority, appears to have been desirous that the honour of the chief command should be conferred upon himself, urging that as it was unreasonable, while they were in Scotland, to put any other in command over Leslie, so now it was unreasonable, while they were in England, and hoped to increase the army by the access of the English, upon whom their principal dependence would be, to expect they would be willing to serve under Leslie; and it would not consist with the honour of any peer of England to receive his orders. Charles was surprised, and urged against the duke his youth; the duke, with sufficient self-confidence, urged again, that Henry IV. of France had won a great battle when he was younger. The king, however, refused to listen to the counsels of his ill-adviser, and the duke did not recover from his ill humour while the army remained in Worcester. The army itself, which in truth must have been a strange array of ragged regiments, felt comfortable; they liked their quarters, and did not desire to quit them till they should be thoroughly refreshed. They were not desirous of

marching farther on; Worcester was a good post, standing in a fertile region in the very heart of the kingdom; and if Cromwell must be met, it appears to have been generally thought it would be better to meet him there. So Charles abandoned his first intention to proceed on to London, and every effort was made to strengthen the position by repairing the breaches of the walls, and throwing up forts; and it is impossible to resist the impression that there was a generally diffused faith that, in this place the tide of conflict and conquest was to turn, and now "the king would enjoy his own again."

Even yet they did not know the man who was marching upon them, they did not understand as yet the shrewdness of that eye, and the resources of that brain. The battle of Worcester, it will be seen at once, differs from any of the other great battles which Cromwell fought, and where his genius rose victorious. Marston and Naseby, and even Dunbar, were on the open plain; but Worcester was a city in possession, and the Royalists no doubt expected, from the security of their position, a protracted siege. Worcester stands, as the reader knows, on the right bank of the Severn, and something had been done by the Royalists to increase its means of resistance. Cromwell, of course, found all the bridges broken down and destroyed; not a boat or punt was to be seen, while, apparently securely fortified, there on the opposite side were seen the heights of the beautiful old city, not less

strong than beautiful. Even Clarendon seems scarcely able to repress his feelings of admiration, as he says, "Cromwell, without troubling himself with the formality of a siege, marched directly on as to a prey, and possessed himself at once of the hill and all the other places of advantage with very little opposition." How did he perform this feat? It may be supposed he knew what he would do before he arrived on the scene of action. While the Royalists felt their security from the broad river of the Severn, and the narrower river of the little Teme, the great general had no sooner arrived than he proceeded at once to throw his army astride across the two rivers by means of pontoons; then he laid a bridge across the Teme close to its junction with the Severn. He used no delay, none of the circumspection which it was supposed he would so naturally and necessarily employ. He soon forced his way through the surprised and weak defenders against the ingress, as the troops landed by the bridges; and in fact, the battle of Worcester may be said. to have been fought in Worcester streets. Cromwell himself soon seized upon the guns of what was called the royal fort, and played them upon the fugitives. The battle raged all round, at every point, although it appears to have been decided under the walls of the town. There Cromwell, with his own Ironsides around him, held the conflict for three hours, "as stiff a contest," he wrote afterwards, "for many hours, including both sides of the river, as he had ever seen."