Note 292 — Chapter X
Reading edition
The chief imputation against Manchester was for not following up his victory in the second battle of Newbury, with which Cromwell openly taxed him; see Ludlow, i. 133. There certainly appears to have been a want of military energy on this occasion; but it is said by Baillie (ii. 76) that all the general officers, Cromwell not excepted, concurred in Manchester's determination. Essex had been suspected from the time of the affair at Brentford, or rather from the battle of Edgehill (Baillie and Ludlow); and his whole conduct, except in the celebrated march to relieve Gloucester, confirmed a reasonable distrust either of his military talents, or of his zeal in the cause. "He loved monarchy and nobility," says Whitelock, p. 108, "and dreaded those who had a design to destroy both." Yet Essex was too much a man of honour to enter on any private intrigues with the king. The other peers employed under the parliament, Stamford, Denbigh, Willoughby, were not successful enough to redeem the suspicions that fell upon their zeal.
All our republican writers, such as Ludlow and Mrs. Hutchinson in that age, Mrs. Macauley and Mr. Brodie more of late, speak acrimoniously of Essex. "Most will be of opinion," says Mr. B. (History of British Empire, iii. 565), "that as ten thousand pounds a year out of the sequestered lands were settled upon him for his services, he was rewarded infinitely beyond his merits." The reward was doubtless magnificent; but the merit of Essex was this, that he made himself the most prominent object of vengeance in case of failure, by taking the command of an army to oppose the king in person at Edgehill: a command of which no other man in his rank was capable, and which could not, at that time, have been intrusted to any man of inferior rank without dissolving the whole confederacy of the parliament.
It is to be observed, moreover, that the two battles of Newbury, like that of Edgehill, were by no means decisive victories on the side of the parliament; and that it is not clear whether either Essex or Manchester could have pushed the king much more than they did. Even after Naseby, his party made a pretty long resistance, and he was as much blamed as they for not pressing his advantages with vigour.