Charles the First and his Star Chamber, with his French queen and her French manœuvres, had turned the people of England against their government. The last Parliaments had proved either divided or rebellious. John Hampden had refused to pay the illegal ship-money; the train bands had been mustered; the whole country had risen to arms. England was parted into two warlike camps, Royalist and Roundhead.
We can see now that there were good and devoted men on both sides, and of every shade of opinion. We can think dispassionately of Lord Falkland the Royalist, and Colonel Hutchinson the Roundhead—of Milton and Andrew Marvel on the one hand, and Jeremy Taylor on the other. But it was fearfully difficult then—in the midst of bitter accusations, hard blows, and cruel wrongs, inflicted almost inevitably by both the contending parties—to distinguish that there was any merit, or any quality save base subserviency or turbulent anarchy, on that side which differed from the faction of the person speaking.
It would be no easy task to decide which of the camps indulged most largely in abusing and slandering the other; but it belonged to the nature of things, and to the characteristics of the men and their leaders, that the Cavaliers, taking them all in all, were the most careless and reckless in the expression of their feelings. It was part of the profession of every Cavalier, from Prince Rupert downwards, to be easy-minded and light-hearted, as he was loyal, to the backbone. He made it a matter of honour that his joviality should be a proof that his conscience was clear, and his cause that of the divine right of kings and the unquestioning obedience of subjects. The very nickname, “crop-eared knave,” which one man applied to his adversary, as opposed to the term “malignant,” given by the Puritan to the Cavalier, showed the light scorn of complacent superiority pitted against deadly earnestness and desperate condemnation.
As it happened in the long run, to their mutual profit, the stout defiant Cavaliers were forced to respect the equally stout and dogged Roundheads, and to carry rueful hearts within their bold breasts under their bluff exteriors; and the Roundheads were compelled to grant grace to men who—in spite of their effeminate love-looks, the levity of their songs, even the profanity of their oaths—struggled against defeat like Englishmen, endured like men, and, with all their follies and sins, were the countrymen and neighbours of their conquerors. As they were human and Christian, these conquerors could not see the beaten foemen biting the dust and wallowing in their blood silently, and think of the near and far halls and granges which these deaths, that were their deed, would leave desolate, without groaning in spirit over some of the fruits of victory, even while the fighters were persuaded it was the Lord’s triumph over the Man of Sin and Satan.