What applause does he give to gallantry of Sir Thomas Fairfax, to his
modesty, to his conduct, under which he himself was subdued, and to
the justice he did the king's troops when they laid down their arms!
His description of the Scots troops in the beginning of the war, and
the behaviour of the party under the Earl of Holland, who went over
against them, are admirable; and his censure of their conduct, who
pushed the king upon the quarrel, and then would not let him fight, is
no more than what many of the king's friends (though less knowing as
soldiers) have often complained of.
In a word, this work is a confutation of many errors in all the
writers upon the subject of our wars in England, and even in that
extraordinary history written by the Earl of Clarendon; but the
editors were so just that when, near twenty years ago, a person
who had written a whole volume in folio, by way of answer to and
confutation of Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion," would have
borrowed the clauses in this account, which clash with that history,
and confront it,--we say the editors were so just as to refuse them.
There can be nothing objected against the general credit of this work,
seeing its truth is established upon universal history; and almost all
the facts, especially those of moment, are confirmed for their general
part by all the writers of those times.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26