vice of the state, manned with fourscore men, aud double equipage, with ammunition, wages, and victuals, at an expense of one thousand eight hundred und fifty pounds, levied by a rate (of three shillings and sixpence in the pound, in the book of rates) on the whole county. About this period orders for ship money are very frequent.

About the year 1638, one Michael Crake, a footman or other servant to King Charles I., was made water-bailiff of the port of Sunderland, first by his Majesty's patent, and afterwards (on the vacancy of a lord high admiral) by lease, and after that by the Earl of Northumberland, lord high admiral. He never enjoyed it peaceably, and was always opposed by Thomas Morton, then Bishop of Durham, or his lessees of that office and port duties, which was contested by orders and counter orders, until the great civil war and the exclusion of the bishops.

In 1642, Crake obtained an order of the Commons House of Parliament to prohibit the clearing of ships without his fees and warrant; but in the following year, the bishop's lessees obtained another order revoking that to Crake, and quieting the lessees in the possession until it should be determined by law, which Crake did not prosecute, and so the lessees continued in possession till their lease expired during the commonwealth.*

We have now approached the era of those civil broils, which filled the state with distraction, during the latter part of the reign of King Charles I., and ultimately brought that wavering monarch to the scaffold. As the political and religious principles which were agitated by the contending parties are well known to every reader of

* Spearman's Enquiry, p. 32.

British history, it would be useless enlarging upon them in a work of this nature; suffice it, therefore, to say that a war with Scotland took place.

On the 20th August, 1640, the Scottish army commanded by Alexander Leslie,* an old experienced general, crossed the Tweed and entered England. On the 22nd they encamped near Wooler, and during the

Alexander Leslie, the celebrated military leader of the Covenanters during the cival wars of Charles I. created Lord Balgonie, and afterwards Earl of Leven, was the son of Captain George Leslie, of Balgonie, by his wife, Anne, a daughter of Stewart, of Ballechin. Of the place of his birth, or the extent of his education, little can be said with certainty. Zachary Hamilton, preceptor to the Pretender's son, told Lord Hailes, that Leslie was a soldier of fortune, and that one day on a march in Scotland, he said to an officer, "There is the house where I went to school." "How, general?" answered the officer, "I thought you could not read." -"Pardon me, I got the length of the letter G." However this may be, certain it is that he acquired the highest reputation as a soldier, under Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, who appointed him governor of Stralsund, which he bravely and vigilantly defended against the Imperialists. He was also governor of the cities along the coast of the Baltic; and afterwards promoted to the rank of field-marshal over an army in Westphalia. In 1639, Leslie returned from Sweden and took the command of the Scottish army raised to resist King Charles I. He died at Balgonie, on the 4th April, 1661, at a very advanced age, and was buried on the 19th of the same month, in the church of Markinch. "Few men," says Chambers, "have been more fortunate in life than Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven. He appears to have entered upon its duties without fortune and with a scanty education, and by the force of his talents, seconded by habits of religion and persevering industry, raised himself to the highest honours which society has to confer, both in his own and in foreign countries. His services were at the time of immense value to his country, and would have been much more so, had they not been shackled by the prejudices, the prepossessions, and the ignorance of those whom the circumstances of birth placed over him as directors. His lordship acquired extensive landed property, particularly Inchmartin in the Carse of Gowrie, which he called Inchleslie. He was twice married; first to Agnes, daughter of Renton of Billy in Berwickshire, and by her had two sons, Gustavus and Alexander, the latter of whom succeeded him as Earl of Leven; and five daughters. After the death of his first wife, which took place in 1651, he married Frances, daughter of Sir John Ferriers of Tamworth in Staffordshire, relict of Sir John Parkington, Baronet, of Westwood, in the county of Worcester, by whom he had no issue. His peerage finally became merged by a female with that of Melville, in conjunction with which it still exists." -Chambers's Scottish Biographical Dictionary, vol. iii., page 394.

night were attacked by the garrison of Berwick, who made a sally, and surprised a detachment, from which they took three field pieces; but the alarm being given, the guns were quickly retaken, and the assailants driven back, with the loss of several prisoners. On the 27th the Scottish army arrived at Newburn (a village about four miles from Newcastle), and established their camp at a spot called Heddon-Law, on elevated ground, from which there was a gradual slope down to the bank of the river Tyne. General Leslie dispatched a drummer to Newcastle, with letters to the mayor and to the commander-in-chief of the royal army; but meeting with Sir Jacob Astley and other officers, who had ridden a little out of the town to survey the ground, the messenger was sent back with his letters unopened, and an intimation that if the Scottish general sent any more sealed letters, it would be better for the messenger had he remained at home. That night the Scots, finding coals in abundance, made great fires in and about their camp, which made it appear of great compass and extent, and tended to impress the English with an exaggerated notion of their force. There were two places at a short distance from each other, at which the river might be forded at low water, opposite which the English general (Lord Conway) had caused sconces or breast-works to be raised; and to support these, in case of an attempt by the Scots to cross the river in the night, a part of the English army was drawn out into a plain of meadow-ground, about a mile in length, stretching along the southern bank of the Tyne from Newburn-haugh to Stella-haugh, and remained there under arms all night. Each of the two sconces just mentioned was defended by four hundred men

In the

(musketeers) with four pieces of ordnance. morning, the whole force, consisting of three thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse, was formed in array of battle on the same spot, the horse being drawn out in squadrons at some distance from the foot, to cover them. The Scots, from the moment of their arrival, had encouraged the English of all classes to come into their camp, where they welcomed them with the warmest expressions of love and cordiality, assuring them that they intended to do harm to none but such as should oppose them in approaching the king, to petition for justice against the incendiaries who were equally hateful to both nations. During the forenoon of Friday, the 28th, the Scots watered their horses on one side of the river, and the English on the other, without any of those insults and reproaches which usually pass between enemies on such occasions; and this was remarked as a proof of the want of animosity between them, and of the distaste of the English soldiers for the war. Nevertheless, the Scots made every preparation for action. They brought cannon into Newburn village, some of which they planted on the steeple of the church, which stood at a short distance. from the river, while their musketeers occupied the church and houses, and lined the lanes and hedges, in and in the neighbourhood of the village. They were enabled to do this almost unobserved, from the advantage of their position, whence they had a distinct view of the English army on the low ground on the other side of the river, and could detect their slightest movements; whereas their own detachments were concealed from view by the trees and hedges which covered the ground to the north of the river.

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Thus for several hours the two armies faced each other, without manifesting any inclination to proceed to blows; until at length, when the day was already far advanced, a Scottish officer, well mounted, having a black feather in his hat, came out of one of the thatched houses in the village of Newburn to water his horse in the river Tyne, as his comrades had done all the day. But an English soldier, perceiving that he directed his eyes to the English entrenchments on the south side of the river with an enquiring look, and imagining, probably, that he was surveying them with a view to an attack, fired at him—perhaps, as was supposed by some, only to frighten him the shot, however, took effect, and the Scottish officer fell wounded from his horse. The Scottish musketeers immediately opened their fire upon the English, who returned it, and a warm fusillade was kept up across the river. The small arms were soon followed by the cannon, the Scots from the steeple directing their shot on the English breast-works, and the English aiming at Newburn church; but the latter were mostly new levies, and hardly knew the use of their guns, and the Scottish fire was therefore much more effectual. Thus they continued firing on both sides until it was nearly the hour of low water, and a breach was made in the greater sconce, which was commanded by Colonel Lunsford. Lunsford's men were already disheartened, many of them were killed and wounded, and it was with difficulty that he restrained the rest from flight; but when, by another discharge of the enemy's guns, one of their captains, with a lieutenant and some other officers, were slain, they were on the point of mutiny, complaining that they were put upon double duty, that they had stood there all night and all that day,