MR. MARKHAM'S "LIFE OF THE GREAT LORD
FAIRFAX."* WE confess that we took up Mr. Markham's portly volume with considerable misgivings as to its probable value. The title looked a little like claptrap, and we were not reassured as to the special * A Life of the Great Lord Fairfax, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Parlia- ment of England. By Clements H. Markham, F.S.A, Author of "The History of the Abyssinian Expedition." London : Macmillan and Co. 1870. qualifications of the writer by the information that he bad lately been engaged on so different a subject as the Abyssinian Expedi- tion. We have been, however, most agreeably convinced of the injustice of our forebodings. Mr. Markham's book, whatever rank may be assigned to its author as a historian, is the work of one who is well conversant with the period on which he writes, not merely in matters immediately bearing on the subject of his work, but in a wider and more general sense. His incidental notices of the men whose names appear in the events of his story show that he is familiar with the period, and that his knowledge is derived not from secondary narrators, but from the original sources of information. Perhaps a stern upholder of the law of severe dignity of style might find fault with an expression here and there as savouring of the popular lecturer's affectations, but these blemishes are not frequent, and, in the main, Mr. Markham's writing is vigorous and pure English. He has a good notion of the nature of evidence, and generally discriminates between the tittle-tattle of ill-informed or prejudiced narrators and real historical evidence. He appears to have ancestral associations with the events of the period and with Fairfax's own military operations, and this has given, no doubt, increased interest and reality to his researches, while it has made him a devout worshipper of his hero. We can- not find much fault with such enthusiasm, when it is accompanied with such intelligent labour in its cause. We must, however, at once state that though, as Mr. Markham explains, the word " great" in the title of his book is intended rather as relative to the other Fairf axes than as an absolute epithet implying the rank in which Fairfax should be placed among his contemporaries generally, he has throughout his volume fought valiantly for a position for his hero (intellectually) much above what we are able, in our own judgment, to assign to him. Mr. Markham has fully succeeded in establishing the distinctive military abilities and services of the Parliamentary General, which have been too much passed over in ordinary histories, in consequence of the greater ultimate fame of the second in command, Oliver Cromwell. In doing this good work, indeed, he has gone to the other extreme, we think, and (unintentionally) has been somewhat unjust in his appreciation of Cromwell's merits. But, on the whole, we are not disposed to dis- pute the eminent position:which he assigns to Fairfax, and the credit which is his due for the successful termination of the first Civil War. In his descriptions of :military movements (which occupy by far the greatest part of his volume) Mr. Markham is quite at home, and we could not refer our readers to so good a modern account elsewhere of the Yorkshire campaigns, and the memorable cam- paign of 1645-6. But when our author turns to civil affairs, and in his zeal for his hero's reputation (while admitting that he was no statesman or politician) endeavours to ascertain and vindicate the course which he pursued in the difficultpositions in which he was from time to time placed with reference to the King, the Army, the Parliament, and the Nation, we are led to doubt whether his attention has been turned as closely in this matter to the original authorities as in his military descriptions and biographical notices, and we think that he certainly fails to grasp the real points at issue. His jealousy of Cromwell's ultimate success in rising to the head of affairs has led him to rely too much on secondary authorities, and he has been hampered and misled in his view of Fairfax's real course of action by the MS. which the latter left behind him, entitled "Short Memorials of Some Things to be cleared during my Command in the Army." Mr. Markham himself says of this document that "it consists of notes hastily jotted down, and is full of mistakes and inaccuracies, having been written from memory to show to a few friends, but without any idea of publication," and that "internal evidence, such as mistakes in dates, careless writing, and the placing of events out of their regular sequence, lead to the conclusion that the memorials were written quite at the close of the great General's life." Yet he uses it in more than one instance as an authority against Crom- well and Ireton, and endeavours to get over a misstatement in it which is too evident to be denied, by an arbitrary limitation of the words of Fairfax, which he thinks enables him to reconcile their general purport with the ascertained facts of the case. This limited statement, however, may be easily shown to be just as irreconcilable with facts as the broader statement really made in the Memorials, and it is far better at once to allow that Fairfax in his old age was weak enough to wish to prove to his Royalist friends that he had not been really that partizan and voluntary agent in the events leading to and accompanying the King's execution that common fame and the appearance of things por- trayed him as having been; ami that (with the assistance of a failing Mr. Markham's account of the military events. Thus, he seems to memory) he exaggerated all his temporary misgivings and hesita- grudge him his share in the victories of Naseby and Marston Moor, tions with respect to his proceedings as head of the Army in the I and in the latter case lends some credence to the absurd story
years 1647 and 1648, into actual non-compliance in any of their most questioned acts.
To prove that we are not speaking without grounds, let our readers first peruse Mr. Markham's ingenious plea, and then let us see how it is supported by the facts of the case. The statement in the Memorials is that "from the time they declared their usurped authority at Triplow Heath, I never gave my free consent to any- thing they did. But being yet undischarged of my place, they set my name, in way of course, to all their papers, whether I consented or not, and to such failings are all authorities subject." On this statement Mr. Markham suggests that "find he prepared it [the MS.] for the press, he would, we cannot doubt, have given the dates within which the said statement is applicable. After the siege of Colchester, Fairfax certainly did consent to the presentation of the Army's Large Remonstrance, and to the publication of the subsequent Declaration, when he marched to London It is simply a hastily written, uncorrected sentence, without the required qualification, which it would certainly have received if a had been published under the author's own eye." And upon the strength of the purely conjectural qualification of the statement in the Memorials, Mr. Markham calmly lays down in his text that "during the next ten months [after the rendezvous on Triplow Heath] the State papers signed by all the Field Officers, and with the General's name attached, were documents which he had never signed, and of which he disapproved." And on this extraordinary exposition of the conduct of a responsible being, he writes, "It was hard to retain his post under such circumstances. Yet no man can accuse Fairfax of personal or interested motives. The course he adopted, whether wisely or unwisely, was the one which appeared to him to be best calculated to further the public service, and he sacrificed his own inclinations for what he believed to be his duty." Now what does this statement imply ? Besides the documents signed officially by Fairfax's secretary, Ruahworth, in the name of the General and Council of Officers, there are many which bear the professed signature of Fairfax, either alone or as the first in a number of signatures of the officers of the Army ; and one of these is a letter to the Lord Mayor of London, against which Mr. Markham especially inveighs, and to which, as he says, the "General's name was attached," the fact being that his professed signature stands first. Does Mr. Markham mean to assert that these professed signatures of Fairfax and the letters in his handwriting were forgeries? Yet, unless they were such, he deliberately signed these documents, just as the other officers did. And what shall we say of his intellectual and moral calibre if either he signed them not agreeing with their contents, or, not having actually signed them, allowed the repeated forgeries to appear during these ten months without a word of public remonstrance and repudiation? In the letters professing to come from him, and apparently in his handwriting, now in the Bodleian Library and elsewhere, he expressly refers to these papers from the Army Council at large, and adopts them. Thus, on the 25th of Jane, 1647, he 'writes:—" As to our removal to further distance from London, we entreat we may receive an answer to the desires of the Army in the papers last we sent you, conceiving we shall neither give satisfaction to the kingdom nor to the Army, who are in expectation of some effect therefrom ;" and the letter ends with a notice of the information they receive of the preparations "for the
raising of a new war" by the Presbyterian leaders of the Parliament. During the whole of the same period Fairfax was in constantpersonal and frequently private communication with the Commissioners from the Parliament, or those placed around the King, several of whom were Presbyterians, or opposed to the line taken by the Army, and yet we do not find in their records of their conversations with him
the slightest trace of any divergence of opinion between him and the other officers, much less of any proceeding having taken place,
such as Mr. Markham represents, without his consent, or accom- panied by a barefaced forgery of his name. The theory is utterly untenable, and there can be no doubt that Fairfax, whether he hesitated or not at first, acquiesced in and voluntarily put his name with full assent ultimately, to the declaration and messages of the Council of Officers. Whether he was previously made acquainted with the proceedings of Colonel Pride in " purging " the House may admit of some doubt, though his own evasive letters to the Speaker on receiving the news from him of this event,
and his conduct in sanctipning the continued imprisonmeut of several of the Members, seems to make it most probable that he did know.
There is as we have said, some injustice done to Cromwell in
of his cowardice told by the two Crawfords,—Major-General Laurence Crawford of Jordanhill (the third in command in the Earl of Manchester's army), and Colonel William Crawford, of Nether Skeldon, who was second in command of the Scotch Dragoons,—in the former case retailed (and edited) by virulent Denzil Holles. The Scots were terribly annoyed at their mis- adventure in the centre of the army, and rightly felt that justice had not been done to their long-sustained resistance under the most disadvantageous circumstances, and they caught at the fact of three of their countrymen—the third was David Lesley—being in the victorious wing of the army, and eagerly sought to attribute to them all the success there, and to disparage Cromwell, the actual commander. Their statements can easily be explained by a refer- ence to the details as told by eye-witnesses, and as Cromwelrs courage is now generally admitted, we need not enter further on the matter. Mr. Markham elsewhere speaks of another accuser of Cromwell, on the subject of the Army negotiations, Major Hunting- ton, in the highest terms; but be omits to mention Milton's statement that Huntington, who had made the attack during Cromwell's absence in the campaign of 1648 and the ascendancy of the ultra-Presbyterians in Parliament, afterwards retracted, and con- fessed by whom he had been suborned.
Fairfax's own character is not an easy one to portray. He was a man of considerable abilities—particularly those of the military caste—straightforward, pertinacious, with a considerable amount of latent passion and pride, accompanied by manners of extreme courtesy, and a kindly and generous disposition, and a complete absence of arrogance or assumption. The bodily ailments to which he was subject, and perhaps a sense of aspirations beyond his powers, gave him in general an air of melancholy, and a habit of reserve ; but action seemed to brace his mind and raise his spirits. He was a man who doubted and hesitated a good deal mentally, but was decided in his action if he acted at all ; who had ordinarily great self-command and self-restraint, and was in general very open to conviction ; but with a certain reserve of dogged persistence in his own decision on what seems quite inadequate occasions. After remaining at the head of the Army, and as the really responsible person for the course of events from the conclusion of the first Civil 1Var in 1646 to the establish- ment of the Commonwealth, and after having made no public demonstration of opposition during the trial and execution of the King, he resigned, and persistently refused to recall his resignation when it was contemplated to anticipate the invasion of England by the Scots (who had actually proclaimed Prince Charles King of England as well as Scotland) by an invasion of the northern king- dom, promising, however, (and afterwards acting on his promise)- that he would take the field against them if they entered England. Perhaps his conduct in this instance is to be explained by his wife's ardent Presbyterianism, not to say Royalism, to which Fairfax had already allowed too much influence. Imagine the position of a man who remains at the head of an army, as its responsible leader, and makes no outward demonstration of his disapprobation of the trial of the King, even sanctioning the authority of the High Court of Justice by attending its first meeting as a judge, and yet whose wife attends in the gallery at a subsequent sitting, and interrupts the Court with feminine abuse and repudiation of its authority ! There must be surely something wanting in the mind of the man who could tolerate this, or whose wife could do anything so indecorous. The same want of something no doubt led to his loss of ascendancy over the Army, which became so evident during the years 1647-8, and which made men look to Cromwell and Ireton rather than to him as the leader of events. According to his own account, posthumous, as we may call it, he was a helpless and unwilling tool all that time ; according to the testimony of facts, he was a willing and acquiescent but a rather uninfluential agent. The ambition of his wife—a Vere, a self-willed though a devoted wife—brought on the calamities of the marriage of his daughter with Buckingham, of whose pure morals at the age of 30 we enter- tain some considerable doubts, notwithstanding Mr. Markham's assurances ; and the intrigues of his son-in-law with the Cavaliers brought on a violent and undignified scene between Cromwell and his former associate and friend, in which Fairfax (by his own relative's confession) lost his temper.
Again, on the eve of the Restoration, when Fairfax rose in Yorkshire, in communication with Monk (of whose purposes he was
confessedly in great doubt), and paralyzed the movements of Lambert, bringing over by his personal influence the greater part of that officer's troops, he seems to have acted with blind rash- ness; and though, as Mr. Markham says, he was in this man- ner probably the main agent in the Restoration, he took no measures to assert his position as a leader in the movement,
allowed it to fall into the hands of unprincipled and greedy men, and delivered, without an effort into the hands of the restored Stuart King and his furious Cavalier partizans, without securing any adequate conditions, the very cause for which he had for years himself expended his fortune and worn out his body and mind. There is something extremely disappointing and mournful in such a man, with such fine instincts of right, such scrupulous feel- ings, and such considerable abilities, and yet with such a lament- able deficiency of commanding energy when the crisis to which he had led the way really arrived.
The notices of the Fairfax family which are introduced into Mr. Markham's narrative are interesting and generally faithful to character. The old Lord (Thomas) Fairfax, the General's grand- father, is well drawn,—a stately old gentleman, somewhat over- bearing in his own family, and in great distress that none of his surviving sous would realize his expectations in the career he had planned for them. "One I sent into the Netherlands," he com- plains, to train him up a soldier, and he makes a tolerable country justice, but is a mere coward at fighting ; my next I sent to Cambridge, and he proves a good lawyer, but a mere dunce at divinity ; and my youngest I sent to the Inns of Court, and he is a good divine, but nobody at the law." The old lord, however, did injustice to his own training of his sons in one instance at least, for the "country justice" and "mere coward" turned out a brave and able commander of the Parliament's Army in Yorkshire, as Ferdinand°, second Lord Fairfax. The third Lord Fairfax was a writer of poetry as well as a general, and Mr. Markham has given us some specimens of his achievements in that department ; but they are scarcely above doggrel as far as versification is concerned, though not deficient in thought or imagination. He collected also a considerable library at Nunappleton, and was a devoted hor- ticulturist, with a keen sense of the pleasures of country life. The present representatives of the family are, it is well known, settled in America, and we learn from Mr. Markham that they distinguished themselves in the recent American Civil War, seemingly on the Southern side, as proprietors in Virginia.
We have expressed our opinion freely on what we consider to be the defects in Mr. Markham's volume, but we can recommend it, as a whole, to the attention of our readers, as an interesting and well-informed book, which will give them a new insight into the life and thoughts of the country gentlemen of the seventeenth century.
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