Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 3/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
COMMONWEALTH (Continued)
Cromwell opened the year 1656 amid a multitude of plots and discontents. The enemies of the republic, royalists, anabaptists, levellers, were all busy in one quarter or another. Cleveland, the poet, who had been taken prisoner nine years before by David Leslie, at Newcastle, and expected to be hanged for his tirades against the Scotch, but had been dismissed by Leslie with the contemptuous words, "Let the poor knave go and sell his ballads," was now seized by colonel Haynes for seditious writings at Norwich, but Cromwell also dismissed him with like indifference.
At the close of the year the Jews, who had been forbidden England, hopeful from the more liberal mercantile notions of Cromwell, petitioned to be allowed to reside in this country, under certain conditions. Cromwell was favourable to the petition, which was presented by Manasseh Ben Israel, a great Portuguese Jew, of Amsterdam, though his council was against it on Scripture grounds; but Cromwell silently took them under his protection. There was also a great committee of trade in the house, under the earnest advocacy of the protector, for promoting commerce. Meantime, Cromwell vigorously prosecuted the war against Spain. Blake and Montague were ordered for the coast of Spain, to destroy the shipping in the harbour of Cadiz, and to see whether Gibraltar could not be seized, which Cromwell, in his letter to the admirals, pointed out as admirably adapted to promote and protect our trade, and keep the Spaniard in check. Yet even this project was not carried out without trouble from the malcontents. Some of the captains of the fleet, tampered with by Charles's emissaries, declared their disapproval of the enterprise, contending that we, and not the Spaniards, were in fault. Cromwell sent down Desborough to them, who weeded them out, and put others in their places. Blake and Montague then set sail, and reached the neighbourhood of Cadiz and Gibraltar in April, but found their defences too strong; they then proceeded to Lisbon, and brought the treaty with the Portuguese to a termination, and afterwards made an alarming visit to Malaga, and to Bailee, to curb the Moors. In July they returned to the Tagus, and in September a part of the fleet under captain Stayner, fell in with and defeated a fleet of eight sail, coming from America. He destroyed four of the vessels, and captured two, containing treasure worth from two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to three hundred thousand pounds.
Before this treasure reached England, Cromwell, who had exhausted his finances to fit out the fleet and prosecute the war with Spain, was compelled to call a parliament, not only to obtain supplies, but to take measures for the security of the nation against the designs of the royalists and their coadjutors, the levellers. This met on the 17th of September, 1656. But Cromwell did not allow all the members elected to sit in this parliament, any more than in the former ones. He knew well that his government and such a parliament could not exist together. The members elected, therefore, were not admitted to sit except they had a certificate of their approval by the council from the chancery clerk. By the withholding of such certificates, nearly one-fourth of the members were excluded. This created a terrible outcry of invasion of parliamentary privileges. Haselrig, Scott, Ashley Cooper, and many other violent republicans were excluded. The excluded members signed an indignant protest, and circulated it in all parts of the country, with the list of their names appended.
The protector opened this purged parliament with a very long speech, which, so far from being a farrago of the unmeaning, unintelligible, and entangled stuff' which Hume represents it, is one of the most remarkable speeches ever addressed to parliament by any ruler. Carlyle truly observes of it, "No royal speech like this was ever delivered elsewhere in the world! It is, with all its prudence—and it is very prudent—sagacious, courteous, right royal in spirit; perhaps the most artless, transparent piece of public speaking this editor has ever studied. Rude, massive, genuine, like a block of unbeaten gold. The man himself, and the England he presided over, there and then, are to a singular degree visible in it.—open to our eyes, to our sympathies. He who would see Oliver, will find more of him here, than in most of the history books yet written about him."
There was, in fact, displayed in it a depth and breadth of policy, an active, earnest spirit of national business, a comprehension of and desire for the establishment of such principles and prosperous measures, a recognition of the rights of the whole world, as affected by the conduct of this one great nation, which have no parallel for true Christian philosophy since the days of Alfred. "We have since then had great and valiant warriors, our Edwards and Henrys, but not a man who combined with the highest military genius and success, a genuine, lofty, and loving Christian sentiment, and an earnest business-like mind like Cromwell. He at once laid down the principle, that all hostility to the commonwealth originated in the hatred of its free and Christian character; and he showed that all these enemies, of whatever theories, had united themselves with Spain. That Spain was the grand adversary of this country, and had been so from the reformation, because she was bigotedly wedded to the system of popery, with all its monks, Jesuits, and inquisitors. He recapitulated its attempts to destroy Elizabeth and her religion; the vain attempts of the Long Parliament to make peace with it, because in any treaty where the pope could grant absolution, you were bound and they were loose, the murder of Ascham, the Long Parliament's ambassador, and no redress to be obtained: and now he informed them, and offered to produce the proofs, that Charles Stuart had put himself in league with Spain, and still more strange, the levellers, pretending to demand a freer and more republican government, had entered into the unnatural alliance with Charles and Spain to murder him and destroy the commonwealth.
All this was perfectly true. Sexby, the leveller, had gone over to Charles, and thence to Spain, to solicit aid towards a popish invasion, offering first to kill Cromwell himself. He obtained forty thousand crowns for the use of his party, and a promise of six thousand men when they were ready to land in England, who should wait in Flanders. Some of this money, when remitted to the accomplices in England, Cromwell intercepted, as he assured the parliament. Sexby followed to accomplish his design of assassinating the protector, as we shall find anon. Cromwell proceeded to remind parliament of the insurrections excited by Charles's emissaries, Wagstaff and Rochester, and the conspiracy of Gerard and Vowel, the outbreaks at Salisbury, Rufford Abbey, and a score of other places; of Wildman taken in the act of penning his call to rebellion, of the design to destroy Monk in Scotland, and of similar instigations in the army in Ireland; of the plottings of the Lord Taafe with Hyde at Antwerp; and, finally, that there had been an attempt to blow him up with gunpowder in his own house, and an officer of the guard had been engaged to seize him in his bed. These last he characterised as "little fiddling attempts not worth naming," and which he regarded no more than he did "a mouse nibbling at his heel." But he told them that the animus altogether was of that un-English and un-Christian character, that it became them to fight fully against it, and though they were low in funds, till they should still put forth all their energies to crush this malignant power of Spain, whence the other enemies drew for strength. He assured them that France was well disposed to them, and that all the rest of the world was at peace with them; and, therefore, the greater the complication of interests amongst their Spanish and domestic enemies, then, he exclaimed, "that in the name of God is the greater reason for you to act vigorously, and waste no precious time!"
He then assured them that the major-generals had done good service in every quarter, that the improvement of the ministry had become manifest through the exercise of the commissioners, and that the presbyterians had themselves expressed their approbation of what had been done in that respect. He strongly recommended to them further equalisation and improvement of the laws, so that every one should have cheap and easy justice, and that the purification of the public morals should be carefully attended to—"The cavalier interest, the badge and character of continuing profaneness, disorder, and wickedness in all places," having worked such deplorable effects. "Nobility and gentry of this nation!" he exclaimed; "in my conscience it was a shame to be a Christian, within these fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years in this nation; whether 'in Caesar's house' or elsewhere! It was a shame, it was a reproach to a man, and the badge of 'Puritan' was put on it." As they would maintain nobility and gentry, he told them they must not suffer these classes "to be patronisers or countenancers of debauchery and disorders! And therefore," he concluded, "I pray and beseech you, in the name of Christ, show yourselves to be men; quit yourselves like men! It doth not infer any reproach if you do show yourselves men—Christian men, which alone will make you quit yourselves."
In the early days of the sitting of this parliament—that is, in the beginning of October—came the news of Stayner's victory over the Spanish Plate fleet, and the capture of the treasure; and in the beginning of November the money arrived, and thirty-eight wagon-loads of silver were sent up from Portsmouth to the mint to be coined, and universal rejoicings. Before the year closed, also, Cromwell, by the help of Mazarin, effected a temporary separation of interests betwixt Charles Stuart and the duke of York; but it did not last long. But by this time colonel Sexby was in England, watching his opportunity to murder Cromwell. He was daring enough to introduce himself amongst the protector's escort in Hyde Park, and he and his accomplices had filed nearly through the hinges of the gates through which the protector was accustomed to pass, so that they might create a sudden obstruction and confusion, during which Sexby might shoot Cromwell. But not being able to succeed to his mind, Sexby returned to Flanders to consult with the royal party, and left sixteen hundred pounds in the hands of one Miles Sindercomb, a cashiered quartermaster, who was to carry out the bloody design. Sindercomb took a house in Hamersmith, where the road by which the protector passed to and from Hampton Court was very narrow, and there he prepared an "infernal machine," consisting of a battery of seven blunderbuses, which was to blow Cromwell's coach to atoms as it passed; but the machine did not answer, or could not be used from the crowd of guards: and then Sindercomb resolved to set fire to Whitehall by night, and kill Cromwell as he came out in the confusion, he had bribed a great number of accomplices, many of them in the palace itself, and had probably a considerable number of fellow conspirators, for he had a hundred swift horses in stables in the neighbourhood, on which he and his confederates might escape, the deed being done. All this was with the privity and approbation of Charles, Clarendon, and the rest of that court, and shows the state of moral principle in it, and which, after the restoration, broke over England like a pestilence. They were constantly dabbling in attempts at assassination, and in the Clarendon papers themselves we have Clarendon's own repeated avowals of his satisfaction in them. He styles these base assassins "brave fellows and honest gentlemen," and thinks it a pity that any agent of the protectorate abroad should not have his throat cut.
But Sindercomb's wholesale bribery led to the detection of the plot. Amongst those tampered with was Henry Toope, a life guardsman, who revealed the scheme. On the 8th of January Sindercomb attended the public worship in the evening at "Whitehall Chapel. Toope, Cecil—a fellow who had been engaged in the construction of the infernal machine—and Sindercomb were arrested, and having been seen about general Lambert's seat, it was examined, and there was found a basketful of the most inflammable materials, strong enough, it was said, to burn through stones, and a lighted slow-burning match, calculated to reach the combustibles about midnight. There were found also holes bored in the wainscoat, to facilitate the communication of the fire, and of draughts to encourage it. Toope and Cecil gave all the information that they could, but Sindercombe was obstinately silent, and being found guilty by a jury of high treason, was condemned to die on Saturday, the 13th. But the evening before, his sister taking leave of him, contrived to carry some poison to him, and the next morning he was found dead in his bed.
Parliament adjourned a week for the trial and examination of the plot, and appointed a day of thanksgiving on Friday, the 23rd. But though Sindercombe was dead, Sexby was alive, and as murderously inclined as ever, and to prevent interrupting other affairs, we may now follow him also to his exit. Though neither fleet nor money were ready to follow up the blow if successful, the gloomy anabaptist once more set out for England with a tract in his possession, called "Killing no Murder," which was no doubt his own composition, though colonel Titus, after the restoration, claimed the merit of it. This tract, taking it as a settled fact that it was a noble piece of patriotism and virtue to kill a tyrant, pronounced Cromwell a tyrant, and therefore declared that it was a noble deed to kill him. It eulogised Sindercombe as the Brutus or Cato of the time. Sexby, disguised like a countryman, and with a large beard, travelled about distributing this pamphlet, but he was tracked, discovered, and lodged in the Tower. There he either went mad or pretended it, made a voluntary confession, found to be intended only to mislead, and, falling ill, died in the following January.
Malaga.
One of the first things which this second parliament of the protectorate did was to abolish the authority of the major-generals. Cromwell had assured them that they were doing good service in suppressing disturbances, and he told them so again, but there were many complaints of their rigour, especially of their levying heavy fines on the royalists; and parliament, on the 29th of January, voted their withdrawal. The next matter, which occupied them for above three months, was the case of James Naylor, the quaker, which we shall refer to under the review of the religion of this period. Before this was settled, it entered on a far more momentous question—no less than whether they should not make Cromwell king.
Those who take an unfavourable view of the character of Cromwell, who regard him as a base mixture of hypocrisy and ambition, accuse him of having planned and manoeuvred for this object; but there appears no evidence of this, but rather that the continual uneasiness created by the royalist and anabaptist assassins led many seriously to consider the peculiar position of the nation, and the imminent dangers to which it was exposed. That there was nothing betwixt the nation and all its old confusions but the life of one clear
CROMWELL REFUSING TO ACCEPT THE CROWN
On the 23rd of February, 1657, suddenly Sir Christopher Pack, late lord mayor of London, craved leave to read a paper, which turned out to be drawn up in the form of a remonstrance from parliament to the protector on the state of the country, and proposing a new form of government, including a house of lords and himself as king. No sooner did the officers of the army, who had just lost their proconsular dignity, and the other republicans hear the proposition, than they rose, seized Pack, and hurried him from his seat to the bar of the house as a traitor. But those who were friendly to the proposition, rose also in his defence, and after much commotion, the paper was not only read, but debated. From this moment this subject occupied the house, with little intermission, till the 9th of May, or between two and three months. The title of the paper was changed from "A humble Address and Remonstrance," to " The humble Petition and Advice of the Parliament of England, Scotland, and Ireland." Its classes were debated and carried seriatim by a majority of one hundred to forty-four, and on the last day of the debate, March 26th, the blank left for the word king, was. filled in by a majority of one hundred and twenty-three to sixty-two; and on the 31st of March an address was carried to the protector at Whitehall by the speaker and the house, praying that his highness would be pleased to adopt their resolutions, and take upon him the state and title of king.
Unquestionably, this was the greatest temptation which had ever been thrown in the way of Cromwell. To have made his way by his energy and talent from the simple condition of a gentleman-farmer to the dictatorship of the nation, and now to have the crown and succession of these great kingdoms offered to him and his family by the parliament, was a matter which would not have been much opposed by an ordinary man. But Cromwell was not of a character lightly to accept even a crown. He showed clearly that he had a strong inclination to place himself and his posterity in that august position, but he knew too well that the honour had also its dangers and its dark side. His acceptance would would at once darken his fair fame by setting it in the conviction of three-fourths of the kingdom that he had only fought and put down the Stuarts to set up himself. There was, moreover, a formidable party opposed to kingship, and especially decided against it were his generals and the army. A deputation of a hundred of them had waited on him on the 27th, with an address on the subject, on which they assured him that such a thing would be "a scandal to the people, would prove more than hazardous to his person, and would pave the way for the return of Charles Stuart." That once accustiom the nation to the name of king again, and it would recall, on the first opportunity, the ancient race.
Cromwell felt too well the truth of these representations, and therefore he gave an answer to the house, requiring time to reflect on their important offer, though he had watched carefully the progress of the debate. He desired that a committee might be appointed to confer with him on all the articles of the new instrument of government proposed to him. A committee of ninety-nine persons was accordingly appointed, amongst them "Whitelock, Glynn, the lord chief justice, lord Broghill, Nathaniel Fiennes, one of the keepers of the great seal, &c. They had many meetings, but Cromwell, instead of giving his opinion upon the subject, desired to know their reasons for recommending this change. The chief reasons advanced were, the ancient habits of the nation; that the people were proud of the honour of their monarchs; that that form of government had prevailed from the most ancient period, and what no doubt weighed greatly with them was, that by the 9th of Edward IV. and the 3rd of Henry VII. it was enacted that all who took up arms for or obeyed the king de facto, were held guiltless; but not so they who served a protector de facto.
Cromwell admitted that this was a matter of precaution which demanded serious consideration, and that he regarded the proposal to him as "a very singular honour and favour," and would return such an answer as God should give him, or as he should arrive at through discussion with them; but that his conscience yet was not clear upon the subject, and they must examine the grounds for it further. Whitelock says the protector often advised about this matter of the kingship, and other great basinesses, with a select number of the committee—lord Broghill, Mr. Pierpoint, brother of the earl of Kingston, Thurloe, Whitelock, and Sir Charles Wolseley, and would be shut up three or four hours together, and none else were admitted to come to him. He would sometimes be very cheerful with them, and, laying aside his greatness, would be exceedingly familiar; and, by way of diversion, would make verses, play at crambo with them, and every one must try his fancy. He commonly called for tobacco, pipes, and a candle, and would now and then take tobacco himself. Then he would fall again to his serious and great business of the kingship. They were interrupted, however, in their colloquies, by a fresh outbreak of the fifth-monarchy men. These religionists, who admitted the idea of no king but Christ, were especially separated at this attempt to set up an earthly king, and determined to rise and prevent it. They fixed Thursday, the 9th of April, for the rising. They issued a proclamation called " A Standard set up," ordered Mile End as the place of rendezvous, and headed by one Venner, a wine merchant, and other persons of the city, calculated on introducing the reign of the Millennium. They encouraged each other, says Thurloe, with the exhortation that though they were but worms, yet they should be made instrumental to thresh mountains. They spoke, he says, great words of the reign of the saints, and the beautiful kingdom of holies which they were to erect, and talked of taking away all taxes, excise, customs, and tithes. They bad banners painted with the device of the lion of the tribe of Judah, and the motto, "Who shall raise him up?"
But the wide awake Thurloe had watched all their motions. That morning at daybreak he marched a troop of horse down upon the meeting at Mile End, seized Venner and twenty other ringleaders, with chests of arms, many-copies of the proclamation, and the famous war-flag of the lion-couchant of Juilah. Major-general Harrison, admiral Lawson, colonel Rich, and others of the leaders of the fifth-monarchy men were also seized, and with these men shut up in the Tower, but no further punished. Venner ended his days for a similar attempt in the reign of Charles II.
The discussions of Cromwell and the committee were resumed, and, without coming to any conclusion, on Tuesday, the 21st of April, the protector suddenly left the consideration of the kingship, and examined and commented on the other articles of the instrument. The chief of those were, that men of all classes were capable of electing and being elected to parliament or to offices of state, excepting papists and royalists, styled malignants, at least such royalists as had been in arms against the parliament since 1642, unless they had since given signal proof of repentance by bearing arms for the parliament; all who had been concerned in the Irish rebellion since 1650, or in any plot in England or Wales since December, 1653; all in Scotland who had been in arms against the parliament of England or parliament of Scotland, except such as had lived peaceably since 1st of March, 1652. Besides those thus excluded, all freeholders of counties, and all burgesses and citizens of towns, in fact, a household suffrage, could vote for members of parliament.
All who were atheistical, blasphemous, married to popish wives, or who trained children, or suffered their children to be trained in popery, or consented that their children should marry papists, who scoffed at religion or at religious people, who denied the Scriptures to be God's word, who denied the sacraments, ministers, or magistracy to be divine ordinances, like the fifth-monarchy men, who were Sabbath-breakers, swearers, haunters of taverns and alehouses,—in fact, were unchristian men, were excluded from electing or being elected. All public preachers were excluded, as better employed in their own vocation, but at the recommendation of Cromwell this was restricted to such preachers as had fixed livings, and not mere voluntary occasional preachers, like himself and many other officers.
A second house of parliament was to be organised, to consist of not less than forty members, nor more than seventy, who were to be nominated by the protector, and approved by the commons. It was not to be called the house of lords, nor the upper, but the other house. The same qualifications and disqualfications applied to it as to the commons. All judges and public officers, as well as those of the army and navy, were to be approved of by the two houses; or if parliament be not sitting, by the council. Another article settled the revenue, and all relating to it—and the most important one to the protector, he was authorised to name his successor before his death. These matters being settled, and the instrument revised by parliament, on the 8th of May Cromwell summoned the house to meet him in the Banqueting-house, Whitehall, where he ratified the rest of the instrument, but gave them this answer as to the kingship—that having taken all the circumstances into consideration, both public and private, he did not feel at liberty in his conscience to accept the government with the title of king. That whatever was not of faith was sin; and that not being satisfied that he could accept it in that form to the real advantage of the nation, he should not be an honest man if he did not firmly, but with every acknowledgment of the infinite obligations they had laid him under—decline it. This was his answer to that great and weighty business.
Whitelock assures us that Cromwell at one time had been satisfied in his private judgment that he might accept the royal title, but that the formidable opposition of the officers of the army had shown him that it might lead to dangerous and deplorable results, and that therefore he believed it better to waive it. Whatever the motives, whether those of conscience or prudence, or both, inciting the protector, he surmounted his temptation, and decided with the firmness characteristic of him. Major-generals Whalley, Goffe, and Berry are said to have been for his acceptance of the crown; Desborough and Fleetwood were strenuous against it, but Lambert, temporising, appearing to approve whilst he was secretly opposing, and at length coming out strong against it,was the only one whom Cromwell visited with his displeasure, he dismissed him, but with a retiring pension of two thousand pounds a year, and Lambert retired to Wimbledon, where it had been happy for him had he remained in quiet:
On the 26th of June, 1657, the grand ceremony of the inauguration of the protector as the head of this new government took place in Westminster Hall. The protector went thither from Whitehall by water, and entered the hall in the following manner:—First went his gentleman, then a herald, next the aldermen, another herald, then Norroy, the lords commmissioners of the treasury, and the great seal carried by commissioner Fiennes, then Garter, and after him the earl of Warwick, with the sword borne before the protector, bareheaded, the lord mayor carrying the city sword at his left hand. Being seated in his chair, on the left hand of it stood the lord mayor and the Dutch ambassador; on the right the French ambassador and the earl of Warwick; next behind him stood his son Richard and his sons-in-law Claypole and Fleetwood, and the privy council. Upon a lower descent stood the lord viscount Lisle, lord Montague, and Whitelock, with drawn swords. As the protector stood under the cloth of state, the speaker presented him with a robe of purple velvet, lined with ermine, which the speaker and Whitelock put upon him. Then the speaker presented him with a Bible richly gilt and bossed, girt the sword about his highness, and delivered into his hand the sceptre of massy gold. Having done this, he made the protector an address, and finally administered the oath. Then Mr. Manton, one of the chaplains, in prayer recommended his highness, the parliament, the council, the forces by land and sea, and the whole government and people of the three nations to the blessing and protection of God. On that the trumpets sounded, the heralds proclaimed his highness protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland; and again the trumpets sounded, and the people shouted, "God save the protector!" This closed the ceremony, and the protector and his train returned to Whitehall as they came.
The ceremony, it is clear, fell little short of a royal ceremony, with the exception of the crown and the anointing. Charles Stuart might have used the words of James of Scotland to Johnny Armstrong—"What lacks this knave that a king should have?" With the exception of the name of king, Cromwell, the farmer, was become the monarch of Great Britain and Ireland. He had all the power, and inhabited the palaces of kings. He had the right to place his son in the supreme seat after him; and one whole house of parliament were the creatures of his own creation, the other were purgated to his express satisfaction.
Cromwell had not enjoyed his new dignity more than about six weeks, when he received the news of the death of his great admiral Blake. His health had been for some time decaying. Scurvy and dropsy were fast destroying him, yet to the last he kept his command at sea, and finished his career with one of the most brilliant victories which had ever been achieved. During the winter and spring he maintained the blockade of Cadiz, but learning that the Plate fleet had taken refuge in the harbour of Santa Cruz, in the island of Teneriffe, he made sail thither. He found the fleet drawn up under the guns of seven batteries in the harbour, which was shaped like a horse shoe. The merchantmen, ten in number, were ranged close in shore, and the galleons, in number and of greater force than any of his own ships, placed in front of them. It was a sight, seven forts, a castle, and sixteen ships, to have daunted any man but Blake. Don Diego Darques, the Spanish admiral, was so confident of the impregnable nature of his position, that he sent Blake word to come and take his vessels. "But," says Clarendon, "the illustrious genius of Blake was admired even by the hostile faction of his countrymen. He was the first man that declined the old track, and made it manifest that the science might be obtained in less time than was imagined, and despised those rules which had long been in practise, to keep his ship and men out of danger, which had been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection, as if the principal act requisite in the captain of a ship, had been to be sure to come safe home again; the first man who brought the ships to contemn castles on shore, which had been thought ever very formidable; the first that infused that portion of courage into the seamen, by making them see what mighty things they could do if they were resolved, and taught them to fight in fire as well as upon water."
Blake therefore did not hesitate. The wind was blowing into the harbour on the morning of the 20th of April; and though an admiral of our time, with a cautionary letter from Sir James Graham "to take care of his ships," would have wondered how he was to get out again, Blake, trusting to the omnipotent instincts of courage, dashed into the harbour at eight o'clock in the morning. Captain Stayner, who had so lately defeated the Spanish Plate fleet, and destroyed in it the viceroy of Peru, now led the way in a frigate, and Blake followed in the larger ships. His fleet altogether amounted to twenty-five sail. It was received with a hurricane of fire from the batteries on both sides the harbour and the fleet in front; but discharging his artillery right and left, he advanced, silencing the forts, and soon driving the seamen from the front line of galleons into the merchant ships. For four hours the flexible encounter continued, the British exposed to a deadly hail of ball from the land as well as the ships, but still pressing on till the Spanish ships were all in flames, and reduced to ashes, the troops in them having escaped to land. The question, then, was how to escape out of the harbour, and from the fury of the exasperated Spaniards on the land around. But Blake drew his ships out of reach of the forts, and as if Providence had wrought in his favour, as Blake firmly believed he did, the wind about sunset veered suddenly round, and the fleet sailed securely out to sea.
The fame of this unparalleled exploit rang throughout Europe, and raised the reputation of England for naval prowess to the highest pitch. Unhappily, death was fast claiming the undaunted admiral. He was sick and suffering at the moment that he won this great triumph, and, sailing homewards, he expired on board his ship, the St. George, just as it entered the harbour of Plymouth. We have quoted the encomium of Clarendon, we may add that of a writer of his own party and time, in the admiring narrative of the "Perfect Politician"—"He was a man most wholly devoted to his country's service, resolute in his undertakings, and most faithful in his performances of them. With him valour seldom missed its reward, nor cowardice its punishment. When news was brought him of a metamorphosis in the state at home, he would then encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, it was not our duty to mind state affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us. In all his expeditions the wind seldom deceived him, but mostly in the end stood his friend, especially in his last undertaking in the Canary Islands. To the last he lived a single life, never being espoused to any but his country's quarrels. As he lived bravely, he died gloriously, and was buried in Henry VII.'s chapel, yet enjoying at this time no other monument but what is raised by his valour, which time itself can hardly deface." Hume, with all his dislike of the commonwealth, supports this eulogy, and adds, "Disinterested, generous, liberal, ambitious only of true glory, dreadful only to his avowed enemies, he forms one of the most perfect characters of the age, and the least stained with those errors and violences which were then so predominant."
During this summer, Oliver had not only been gloriously engaged at sea, but he had been busy on land. He was in league with Louis XIV. of France to drive the Spaniards from the Netherlands. The French forces were conducted by the celebrated marshal Turenne, and the Spanish by Don John of Austria, and the French insurgent chief, the prince of Condé. Cromwell sent over six thousand men under Sir John Reynolds, who landed near Boulogne on the 13th and 14th of May. They were supported by a strong fleet under admiral Montague, the late colleague of Blake, which cruised on the coast. The first united operations were to be the reductions of Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk, the first of which places, when taken, was to belong to France, the two latter to England. If Gravelines was taken first, it was to be put into possession of England, as a pledge for the conveyance of the two latter. This bold demand, on the part of Cromwell, astonished his French allies, and was violently posed by the French cabinets, who told Louis that Dunkirk, once in the hands of the English, would prove another Calais to France. But without Dunkirk, which Cromwell deemed necessary as a check to the royalist invasions from the Netherlands, with which he was continually threatened, no aid was to be had from the protector, and it was conceded, whence came the angry declaration from the French, that "Mazarin feared Cromwell more than the devil."
The French court endeavoured to employ the English forces on other work than the reduction of these stipulated places. The young French king went down to the coast to see the British army, and having expressed much admiration of them, recommended them to lay siege to Montmédi, Cambray, and other towns in the interior. Cromwell was, however, too much of a man of business and a general to suffer this. He ordered his ambassador. Sir William Lockhart, who had married his niece. Miss Rosina Sewster, to remonstrate, and insist on the attack of Gravolines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk. He told the ambassador that to talk of Cambray and interior towns as guarantees, were "parcels of words for children. If they will give us garrisons, let them give us Calais, Dieppe, and Boulogne." He bade him tell the cardinal that if he meant any good from the treaty with him he must keep it, and go to work on Dunkirk, when, if necessary, he would send over two thousand more of his veterans. This had the necessary effect: Mardyke was taken after a siege of three days only, and put into the hands of the English on the 23rd of September. The attack was then turned on Gravelines; but the enemy opened their sluices, and laid all the country round under water. On this Turenne, probably glad of the delay, put his troops at that early period into winter quarters. During this time attempts were made to corrupt the English officers by the Stuart party. The duke of York was in the Spanish army with the English royalist exiles, and communications were opened as of mere civility with the English at Mardyke. As the English officers took their rides betwixt Mardyke and Dunkirk, they were frequently met by the duke's officers, and conversation took place. Sir John Reynolds was imprudent enough to pay his respects to the duke on these occasions, and he was soon ordered to London to answer for his conduct; but both he and a colonel White, who was evidence against him, were lost on the 5th of December on the Goodwin Sands. The duke of York now made a treacherous attack on Mardyke, but was repulsed, and the affairs of Charles II. appeared so hopeless, that Burnet asserts, and the same thing is asserted also in the Orrery letters, that he was now mean enough to offer to marry one of Cromwell's daughters, and thus settle all differences, but that Cromwell told lord Orrery that Charles was so damnably debauched, that he would undo them all. Cromwell, indeed, just now married his two remaining single daughters, Frances and Mary, to the lords Rich and Falconberg. Frances married lord Rich, the son of the earl of Warwick, and Mary, lord Falconberg, of the Yorkshire family of Bellasis, formerly so zealous for the royal party.
Before closing the events of 1657, we may notice the death of colonel John Lilburne, one of the most outré and undaunted republicans of the period. Lilburne, after his fiery and irritable career, adopted the principles of George Fox, and became a member of the peaceable Society of Friends, and his remains were attended by them to their graveyard in Moorfields, August 31st; some disturbance arising on the occasion from some of his worldly friends insisting on the coffin being covered by a pall, and the friends as stoutly refusing, so that contention seemed doomed to attend "John against Lilburne and Lilburne against John" even to the grave.
The year 1658 opened by the opening of the new parliament. It was a critical adventure, and not destined to succeed better than the former ones. To constitute the new house, called the other house, he had been obliged to remove to it most of the leading and best affected members of the commons. To comply with the "Petition and Advice," he had been obliged to admit into the commons many who had been expelled from the former ones for their violent republicanism. The consequences immediately appeared. The other house consisted of sixty-three members. It included six of the ancient peers, the earls of Manchester, Warwick, Mulgrave, Falconberg, Saye and Sele, and lord Eure. But none but Eure and Falconberg took their seats, not even the earl of Warwick, whose son and heir, lord Rich, had just married the protector's daughter. He and the others objected to sit in the same house with general Hewson, who had once been a shoemaker, and Pride, who had been a drayman. Amongst the members of this other house appeared a considerable number of the officers of the army, and the chief ministers of state. There the protector's two sons, Richard and Henry Cromwell, Fienncs, keeper of the great seal. Lisle, Fleetwood, Slonk, Whalley, Whitelock, Barkstead, Pride, Hewson, Goffe, Sir Christopher Pack, alderman of London, general Claypole, St. John, and other old friends of the protector, besides the lords already mentioned. As they had been called by writs, which were copies of the royal writs used on such occasions, the members immediately assumed that it made them peers, and gave them a title to hereditary rank. They were addressed by Cromwell in his opening speech as "My lords, and gentlemen of the house of commons." His speech was very short, for he complained of indisposition, the truth being, that the life of excitement, struggle, and incessant cares for twenty years had undermined his iron frame, and he was broken up; but he congratulated them on the internal peace attained, warned them, however, of danger from without, and exhorted them to unity and earnestness for the public good. Fiennes, after his retirement, addressed them in a much longer speech on the condition of the nation.
But all hopes of this nondescript parliament were vain. The other house no sooner met apart, than they began inquiring into their privileges, and assuming that they were not merely the other house, but the upper house, sent a message after the fashion of the ancient peers by the judges, to desire a conference with them on the subject of a fast. The commons, however, who were by the new instrument made judges of the other house, being authorised to approve or disapprove of it, soon showed that they meant the other house to be not an upper house, but a lower house than themselves. They claimed to be the representatives of the people; but who, they asked, had made the other house a house of peers, who had given them an authority and a negative voice over them? The first thing which the commons did on meeting, was to claim the powers of the new instrument, and admit the most violent of the excluded members, for none were to be excluded except the rebellious or papists. Haselrig, who had been appointed one of the other house, refused to sit in it; but having been elected to the commons, he appeared there, and demanded his oath. Francis Bacon, the clerk of the house, replied that he dared not give it him; but Haselrig insisted, and being supported by his party, he at length obtained his oath and took his seat. It was then soon seen that the efficient government members were gone to the other house, and Haselrig, Scott, Robinson, and the most fiery members of the republican section, now carried things their own way, and commenced a course of the most vehement opposition. Scott ripped up the whole history of the house of lords during the struggle of the commonwealth. He said—"The lords would not join in the trial of the king. We called the king to our bar and arraigned him. He was for his obstinacy and guilt condemned and executed, and so let all the enemies of God perish! The house of commons had a good conscience in it.
Richard Cromwell. From an authentic Portrait
DEATH OF CROMWELL.
But all argument was lost on that fiery section. Scott and Haselrig continued their assaults on the whole frame of government more vehemently than ever; and on the 4th of February, fifteen days from the meeting of parliament, amid a confused bickering of Scott and Haselrig, with the wearied house, arrived the usher of the black rod to summon the members to the other house, which he called boldly, the house of lords. Haselrig, in the midst of his harangue, was reminded of the presence of the black rod. "What care I for the black rod?" he exclaimed, but he was compelled to obey.
The protector expressed the intensity of his disappointment that the very men who had importuned him to assume the burden of this government, and even to the title of king, should now, instead of attending to the urgent business of the nation, endeavour violently to destroy that government, and throw everything into chaos. He observed, "I can say in the presence of God, in comparison with whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have been glad to have lived under a wood side, to have kept a flock of sheep rather than have undertaken such a government as this. But undertaking it by the advice and petition of you, I did look that you, who had offered it unto me, should make it good." He added, "And if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time to put an end to your sitting; and I do dissolve this parliament." And thus closed the last parliament of Cromwell, after a session of a fortnight.
Having dismissed his parliament, Cromwell had to take summary measures with the host of conspirators which his refractory parliaments had only tended to encourage. Since the "Killing no Murder" of Sexby, there were members who were by no means careful to conceal that they loved these doctrines, and persuaded the discontented that to kill Cromwell was to cure all the evils of the nations. The royalists on their part, who had always advocates and practisers of assassination, were more than ever on the alert. On the commencement of the year 1658, the plan of an invasion was completed. The king of Spain furnished one hundred and fifty thousand crowns towards fitting it out: arms, ammunition, and transports were purchased in Holland, and the port of Ostend was to be the place of embarkation. The greatest drawback to the hopes of the royalists were the dissipated and debauched habits of the king. Ormond, writing to Hyde, observed that he feared Charles's immoderate delight in empty, effeminate, and vulgar conversations was become an irresistible part of his nature, and would never suffer him to animate his own designs and the actions of others with that spirit which was necessary for his quality, and much more for his fortunes. Yet this was the man on whom their hopes of the restoration of monarchy was built. Ormond and O'Neil ventured to England in disguise, in order to ascertain what were really the resources and the spirit of the royalists in the country. He there had private communication with all parties—with the earls of Manchester and Denbigh, with Rossiter and Sir William Waller, as presbyterians opposed to Cromwell and the independents; with Saye and Sele and others, who were willing that the king should return on his signing the same articles that his father had offered in the Isle of Wight; and with such of the fanatic levellers as held the opinions of Sexby. But he found little that was encouraging amongst any of them. If we are to believe Clarendon, ho was betrayed by one of those in whom he most trusted, Sir Richard Waller, who was high in the confidence of Charles, but was at the same time a paid spy of Cromwell's. It is certain that one day in March the protector said to lord Broghill "An old friend of yours is in town, the duke of Ormond, now lodged in Dury Lane, at the papist surgeon's there. You had better tell him to be gone." Broghill found that this was the case, and gave Ormond the necessary hint, who hurried back to Bruges, and assured Charles and his court that Cromwell had many enemies, but there was at present no chance of a successful invasion.
But if Cromwell was disposed to allow Ormond to escape, he was compelled to make an example of some other of the royalist agitators. On the 12th of March the protector sent for the lord mayor and aldermen to Whitehall, informed them that the duke of Ormond had been lurking in the city to excite rebellion, and that it was necessary to take strict measures for putting down the seditious of all sorts. At the same time he ordered the fleet to sweep the coasts of the Netherlands, which drove in there two fleets intended for the royalist expedition, and blockaded Ostend. He then determined to bring to justice some of the most incorrigible agitators. Sir Henry Slingsby, who had been confined in Hull ever since the outbreak of Penruddock, had not even there ceased his active resistance, employing himself to corrupt the officers of the garrison, who, being instructed by the governor, appeared to listen to his views, so that ere long he was emboldened to offer them commissions from Charles Stuart. Another person arrested was Dr. Hewet, an episcopalian clergymen, who preached at St. Gregory's, near St. Paul's, and was a most indefatigable advocate of a royal invasion. There were numbers of the royalist apprentices, and others in the city, who were not patient enough to wait for the invasion; they resolved to rise on the 15th of May, fire the houses near the Tower, and by sound of drum proclaim the king. The protector told Thurloe that "it was not fit that there should be a plot of this kind every winter," and Thurloe had made himself thoroughly aware of all their proceedings. As the time approached, the ringleaders were seized at the Mermaid, in Cheapside, a high court of justice was appointed according to act of parliament, and Slingsby, Hewet, and the city incendiaries were tried. There was ample proof of their guilt. Hewet denied the authority of the court and refused to plead, but he was all the same condemned with Slingsby and six of the city traitors to death.
There were strenuous endeavours to save the lives of Slingsby and Hewet in the protector's own family. Slingsby was the uncle of lord Falconberg, who had lately married one of Cromwell's daughters, and Hewet was said to be a great favourite of lady Claypole, Cromwell's favourite daughter, who interceded for him. The story of lady Claypole's grief for the death of Hewet cannot, however, be true, for, only four days after his death, she wrote to her sister-in-law, the wife of Henry Cromwell, congratulating her on the defeat of the treason of Hewet, adding in choice orthography, "for sertingly not ondly his (Cromwell's) family would have been ruined, but in all probabilllyte the hol nation would have been invold in blod." Hewet and Slingsby were beheaded, and three of the six condemned city men, Ashton, Stacoy, and Betteley, were hanged.
In the Netherlands Sir William Lockhart admirably supplied the place of Sir John Reynolds, acting both as ambassador and general. The allied army opened the campaign of 1658 with the siege of Dunkirk. The prince of Condé had in vain assured the Spaniards that this would be the case, whilst they imagined that the intention of the allies was to besiege Cambray. When Don Juan saw his mistake, he determined to attack the allies and raise the siege. But Turenne and Lockhart would not wait to be attacked; they marched to meet the Spaniards, and surprised them before they had received their supply of ammunition for the intended assault. Don Juan hastily drew up his forces along a ridge of sandhills, extending from the sea coast to near the village of Zudcote, and gave the command of the right wing to the duke of York, and the left to Condé, himself commanding the centre. Lockhart was too ill to take the command, but gave it to colonel Morgan, who, with his English forces, found himself opposed to the duke of York. The English dashed up the sandhills, and soon drove the infantry of the enemy before them. They were then charged by the duke of York at the head of the Spanish cavalry, and the battle was terrible, but nearly half of the duke's men fell under the well-directed fire of his countrymen. The left wing, however, under Condé, had given way, and the duke, leaving his rallied infantry to contend with the English in front, directed the charge of his cavalry against their flank. It was in vain; the centre gave way without fighting, and the brave English defending themselves against their numerous assailants till relieved by a body of French horse, the whole line of the Spaniards gave way. The duke of York, who had fought gallantly, was only saved in the first charge by the temper of his armour, and in the second he was surrounded by the enemy, and, according to his own account, only extricated himself by assuming the character of a French officer, and leading on several troopers to the charge till he saw a chance of riding off. Marshal Turenne gave the credit of the victory to the gallantry of the English, who had, at the close of the battle, scarcely a single officer left alive. At Whitehall the victory was attributed to the prayers of the saints at court, for it happened that the protector had set apart that day for a solemn fast, and, says Thurloe, "whilst we were praying, they were fighting, and the Lord gave a signal answer."
The lord Falconberg was despatched to carry congratulations to Louis XIV., who was at Calais, and soon after these wore returned by the duke of Crequi and M. Mancini, the nephew of Mazarin, who apologised, through urgent affairs, for not coming himself, as he said he had long desired; but he sent a magnificent sword from the king, and a fine piece of tapestry from himself. Dunkirk was given up to the English, Gravelines was soon after taken, Ypres surrendered, and all the towns on the banks of the Lys speedily fell into the hands of the conquerors.
Here closed the victorious career of Oliver Cromwell; these were the last of his triumphs, and nearly the last of his life. Though he now stood apparently at the summit of fortune, both domestic and foreign enemies being for the time subdued, yet the grand platform of life and mortal glory was already giving way beneath him. His health was undermined by the long conflict with a host of enemies, and circumstances were glooming around him. Sickness had entered, death was about to enter and select its victims from his own house. Twelve days after the dissolution of parliament died lord Rich, the son of the earl of Warwick, leaving his daughter Frances a young widow; his daughter Claypole, his favourite daughter, was lying ill, and beyond the reach of medical art at that period, and his own iron frame was yielding. Around him, in his outward affairs, the circumstances were full of anxiety. He knew that he had repulsed, but not destroyed the domestic enemies of his government. They were as alive as ever to the chance of starting up and again attempting to overturn his government. All his three parliaments had proved thoroughly unmanageable, and had reduced him to the very measures so strongly condemned in Charles I.—continual interruptions of the debates, invasion of privileges, and abrupt dissolutions to prevent the completion of hostile measures. The only circumstance in his favour was—that Charles's arbitrary acts were for the formation of despotism; his for that of a rational liberty. Under no previous government had the people enjoyed such just laws, just judges, and so much liberty, especially religious liberty.
But, like Charles, he was now governing without a parliament, and, like him, being without a parliament, he was without funds. The wars on sea and land had thoroughly emptied his exchequer, and to raise supplies by arbitrary means would cover him with the odium which had clung to the king he had overthrown. He appointed a committee of nine persons to consider on the best means of calling a parliament likely to work with the existing government, and also to decide on the proper successor to the protectorate. But even in this committee were secret enemies, and it came to no conclusion on the parliament; but on that of the succession, it determined that as the succession had been left to the protector, it was a matter of no consequence. Suspecting their motives, and deriving no benefit from them, he dismissed the committee towards the end of July, and was left with no resource but the ingenuity of Thurloe, his secretary, who borrowed where he could, but was often refused. This could not, however, last long. His army was his grand prop, and so long as it was duly paid and clothed there was no danger, but let it fall into arrears, and it would soon begin to listen to the suggestions of the republican and anabaptist officers. With these gloomy circumstances, his suspicions seem to have grown of those about him, or of assassins who might make more successful attempts than before; as his health failed his fears acquired the greater ascendant. He is said to have worn armour under his clothes: we know that he had long carried loaded pistols. Clarendon says he had become much "less easy of access, nor so much seen abroad; and he seemed to be in some disorder when his eyes found any stranger in the room, upon whom they still seemed fixed. When he intended to go to Hampton Court, which was his principal delight and diversion, it was never known till he was in the coach, which way he would go; and he was still hemmed in by his guards both before and behind; and the coach in which he went was always thronged as full as it could be with his servants, who were armed, and he seldom returned the same way he went, and rarely lodged two nights together in one chamber, but had many furnished and prepared, to which his own key conducted him."
Though this is the statement of an enemy, we can very well believe it, for the life of Oliver had been for years aimed at by assassins, both royalist and republican, by paid bravoes of Charles II., and by fanatics. The fears and anxieties of these various causes would tell strongly as his health failed. He reached his fifty-ninth year in April, and was therefore fast reaching his sixtieth. For fourteen days before the death of lady Claypole, the protector was almost day and night by her bedside, not being able to attend to any business in his deep anxiety. Much has been said of closetings with the lady Claypole on her deathbed, and of her expressing a strong sense of the blood that had been shed, and especially that of the king, and of her having earnestly exhorted him to resign the government and restore the ancient family, and that these expostulations from his dying daughter weighed heavily on his mind. But this is all mere surmise. That lady Claypole might, as a woman, have such conscientious sentiments on the subject is quite possible; but even Clarendon, while favouring the belief, confesses that "nobody was near enough to hear the particulars." That Cromwell, as well as his coadjutors, were honestly convinced that the death of Charles was both just and absolutely necessary, there can be no doubt; yet, even under such circumstances, the beloved props of his house falling around him, and the sentient shadow of his own death drawing near, a man might very well question again, and question gloomily, the grounds of so unexampled a measure as the trial and execution of his king. But that Cromwell did so is mere conjecture; that the loss of his daughter acting on his own failing frame hastened his own decease, there can be no doubt. Lady Claypole died on the 6th of August, and George Fox going to Hampton Court, to represent to Cromwell the persecutions of his friends, on the 20th of that month, met him riding in Hampton Court Park at the head of his life guards, and was so struck with his altered appearance, that he said "he felt a waft of death go forth against him, and when he came up to him he looked like a dead man." On hearing George's statement, he desired him to come to the palace to him; but the next day when he went thither, he was told that he was much worse, and that the physicians were not willing he should speak with him. He died on the 3rd of September, the day of Dunbar and Worcester, the day which he had set down as his fortunate day, and which was in nothing more so than in this last and finishing event. He laid down a burden which he had often said "was too heavy for man," and with the possession of that form of government which he sincerely deemed essential to truth and liberty still in his grasp. It was a form of government which had no foundation in the opinions and convictions of the people at large, and which must sooner or later fall: and the old prejudices in favour of royalty bring back a fresh lesson of martyrdom to its votaries. The dictatorship was at an end; it had been maintained by his own innate vigour, and could only last as long as he did. The day that he died was a day of terrible wind, and his enemies declare that the devil came in it to fetch him away; his friends—that nature could not witness the departure of so great a spirit without marking it with its strong emotion. Many are the sayings of his last hours reported by friends and enemies, but it is certain that he expressed his firm conviction that he died in the unbroken covenant with God. That he had filled him with as much assurance of his pardon and his love as his sold could hold, and that he was a conqueror, and more than a conqueror, through Christ that had strengthened him.
The character of Cromwell has been drawn according to the bias of the various parties who depicted him. With the royalists he was an adventurer and usurper; with the ultra-republicans a traitor. Some have been pleased to regard him as a canting hypocrite, and others as the perfect specimen of a hero and a statesmen. All have been compelled to acknowledge the pre-eminence of his genius and the force of his character. Clarendon, the royalist historian, concludes his portraiture with these remarks:—"In a word, as he was guilty of many crimes against which damnation is denounced, and for which hell-fire is prepared, so he had some good qualities which have caused the memory of some men in all ages to be celebrated, and he will be looked upon by posterity as a brave, wicked man." On the other hand a modern biographer has exalted him to the skies as a perfect saint and demi-god, in whom there is no possible flaw, and whose darkest act has some sublime excuse; but as the same eccentric writer has also placed Mahomet on the pedestal of perfection, and made his mission as sacred as that of our Saviour—an apotheosis which he will doubtless confer on the deistical old tyrant, Frederick of Prussia—his estimate has all the less value. The simple fact is, that Oliver Cromwell was a great man with a great man's faults, but with talents, virtues, and noble intentions which far outweigh them. That he was an earnest and liberty-loving man of the highest purposes and the most enlightened views, few persons can compare his history with those which went I before and came after it without conceding. He was led on by the force of circumstances and the predominance of his genius, to the highest place in his country; and had not the immaturity, in the nation, of the principles on which he and his party acted, compelled him to restrain the wildness of one party, and the despotism of others, he would undoubtedly have left to his country the august legacy of a system of government, such as no country then, and few now have attained to. He was far before his age; and the fact which so strongly attests the virtue and patriotism of the man, is, that he became arbitrary and a dictator to establish, if possible, not a despotism, but a free and tolerant government.
When we compare the lawlessness of the reigns before him, the debauchery and bigotry of those which came after; when we recall the bloody scaffolds, the crowded dungeons, the brandings, the ear-loppings, the nose-slittings, the wholesale ruin of families on account of their religious faith, and all the villainies and merciless oppressions of the chambers and High Commission Courts, with the mildness and forbearance of the commonwealth—the fierce intolerance of even republican presbyterianism, with the freedom of faith which Cromwell established, and his zealous care for a ministry not of any particular dogmas but of genuine and generous piety—blind, indeed, must be the man who does not recognise, in all its admirable proportions, the memory of one of the most truly great men which any age or nation has produced. The heroes and statesmen of the commonwealth have left doctrines and examples which are still the study and the imitation of nations. The vigour, and stern, high principle of Cromwell awed all the crowned heads of Europe, and raised the fame of England abroad higher than it had ever reached before. Our Edwards and Henrys claim great prestige as warriors; but since the time of Alfred no man has sate in the supreme scat of these realms, who at the same time legislated with the same bold, earnest, and Christian wisdom and integrity for the people at large. Till Bonaparte arose and overran all Europe, there was no name which received so universally the homage of the world for victory and high fortune as that of Cromwell; and if we look at the principles which each of these two conquerors promulgated, there can be no estimate of true fame in which Cromwell will not rise far beyond the modern.
In private life he was at once simple, and yet maintained a dignity, says one of his worst calumniators, "such as might befit the greatest monarch." His letters to his familiar friends and the members of his family display his character in a most amiable and pious light, and he was accustomed to unbend amongst his officers and ministers in a manner that none but a man with a kind heart and good conscience could do. Ludlow tells us that on one occasion, after a very serious debate, he threw, in a frolic, a cushion at his head, and when Ludlow took up another cushion to throw it in return, he escaped laughing, and ran down stairs in such a hurry that he had nearly fallen. He would sometimes frankly tell the nobility of their drinking the health of the king and royal family, and without the slightest ill-humour advise them to be more cautious. He was extremely temperate in his diet, though liberal in his table for his officers and public company. He delighted in music, and gave choice entertainments, where the greatest masters were engaged. He surrounded himself with all the great minds of the age, and their talents were called into service for their country. Milton was his Latin secretary; Milton's friend, Thurloe, was his intimate friend and secretary of state; Hartlib, a learned Pole, another friend of Milton's, he esteemed and pensioned; Andrew Marvel was a frequenter of his house; archbishop Usher, though a prelate, was high in his regard; Waller, and even the youthful Dryden were his friends; and even where he could not restrain his parliament from harsh measures, he mitigated their rigour. He pensioned John Biddell, the unitarian, liberated the misguided James Naylor, though he could not save him from the barbarity of the parliament, and delighted to see and converse with George Fox. Through the miseries which the civil war inflicted on the country reduced its internal condition to one of much suffering, yet, says Bate, in his Elenclous Motuum, after finding many faults mixed with his merits, "Now trade began to flourish, and, to say all in a word, all England over there were halcyon days."
On his death-bed the protector had been asked to name his successor. Empowered by the "Petition and Advice," he had already named him in a sealed packet which now, however, could not be found, and though he was supposed to say Richard, it was so indistinctly, that it was by no means certain. However, Richard was proclaimed in London and Westminster, and then in all the large towns at home, and in Dunkirk and the colonies abroad. At first all appeared favourable for the peaceable succession of Richard. All parties hastened to congratulate him. Foreign ministers sent addresses of condolence, and intimations of their desire to renew their alliances. From all parts of the country, and from the city, and from one hundred congregational churches, poured in addresses, conceived in the most fulsome affectation of religion. "Their sun was set, but no night had followed. They had lost the nursing father, by whose hand the yoke of bondage had been broken from the necks and consciences of the godly. Providence had taken the breath from their nostrils, but had given them instead the noblest branch of that renowned stock, a prince distinguished by the beauty of his person, but still more by the eminent qualities of his mind." Cromwell had been a Moses, but his son was a Joshua. Elijah was gone, but Elisha remained.
The royalists were confounded to find all pass over so smoothly, but all who knew the retiring, facile disposition of Richard, and the volcano of raging materials which lay in the sects, factions, and parties which at that moment divided and internally agitated England, could only look on it as the lull before the tempest. This same external sycophancy was displayed in the funeral of the protector. The body lay in state at Somerset House, all the ceremonial being copied from that of the interment of Philip II. of Spain. The rooms were hung with black cloth, and wax lights were kept burning. An effigy of Cromwell lay on a bed of state, and which was supposed to rest upon the coffin. In one hand was the sceptre, in the other the globe, the crown was not on his head, but rested on a cushion at the back of it, and on each side lay various pieces of his armour. The body was secretly buried by night in a vault in Westminster Abbey, as there were rumours of an intended insurrection during the funeral; the ceremony, however, continued for eight weeks, the effigy being after a time placed erect, with the crown upon its head. In fact, the protector, after his decease, was treated with all those royal honours which he had refused during hfe, and the people who could enact or could tolerate this, could not be far off monarchy. In fact, long before these ceremonies were at an end, all the elements of discord and confusion were actually fermenting—the certain heralds of the return to the ancient state of things. Richard Cromwell had all his life long displayed a penchant only for a quiet country life. He had no ambitions, either military or political. He had lived in his domestic retirement, neither entering the field or the cabinet, and his father, in his letters, was continually calling him "indolent Dick." It was impossible that such a man could ever curb the fierce and conflicting factions with which he was surrounded; it is most probable that he only longed to be well rid of the whole onerous burden.
There wore various chiefs in the army, so nearly equal in rank and influence, that there was certain to be strife for the chief command. Fleetwood had married a sister of the present protector's; Desborough was his uncle; his brother Henry, who was lord-lieutenant of Ireland, was a much more resolute and able man than himself; and Monk, in Scotland, had great power in his hands. The chief command in the army lay, by the late instrument, in the protector himself; but the officers of the army met and drew up a petition that the chief command should be conferred on some one of the generals who had shown his attachment to the cause by his services, and that no officer should be deprived of his commission except by sentence of a court martial. Richard, by the advice of Thurloe, replied that he had appointed general Fleetwood lieutenant-general of the forces, but that to give up the supreme command would be to violate the "Petition and Advice," by which he held his own authority. This did not content the officers; they still held their meetings, a liberty which Oliver had wisely suppressed, and there were many suspicions expressed amongst them. They asserted that Henry Cromwell would soon be placed above Fleetwood, who, though a conscientious man, was a very weak and vacillating one, and they demanded that Thurloe, St. John, and Pierrepont, Richard's ablest counsellors, should be dismissed, as enemies to the army. It was clear that a collision must take place betwixt these parties and Thurloe, and his friends advised Richard to call a parliament, by which he would not only be able to curb the power of the officers, but to raise money for the payment of the soldiers. The nation was keeping a large fleet under Ayscue or Ayscough, part of which was cruising in the Baltic, to protect the English allies, the Swedes, against the Danes and Dutch, and another under Montague was blockading the Dutch coast. Money, therefore, was absolutely necessary to defray expenses, and Richard consented to call a parliament. It was a necessary evil, a formidable under-taking; for the five months that passed before their meeting, Richard ruled with all the outward state, and with more than the quiet of his father. But his father, with all his vigour and tact, had never been able to manage a parliament, every one of which immediately set about to overthrow him; what hope, then, that Richard's placid temper could contend with such a restless and domineering body? It was absolutely impossible, and he was immediately made sensible of it. To introduce as many members of the commons as he could favourable to his views, he departed from his father's plan of only calling them from the larger boroughs and the counties, and returned the franchise to the lesser and decayed boroughs. Every means was used besides to obtain the return of men favourable to the government; and in Scotland and Ireland, from whence thirty members each were admitted, the elections were conducted under the eyes of the commander of the forces. But, notwithstanding, from the very first assembling of the commons, they showed that they were likely to be as unmanageable as ever. When Richard summoned the commons to meet him in the lords, scarcely half the members attended, lest they should sanction the existence of a body that they disclaimed. The commons were as much divided as the army. There were the friends of the government, who were instructed to stand firm by the "Petition and Advice," and the government, founded by it, of one ruling person and two houses of parliament. Then there were the presbyterians and republicans, who were for no lords nor protector either, and were led on by Haselrig, Scott, Bradshaw, Lambert, Ludlow, and others of those united parties, with whom Vane and Fairfax now co-operated. Fairfax, from the moment when he showed his disapprobation of the death of Charles I., had retired to private life, but now he reappeared, and, though become a royalist at heart, his spirited lady no doubt having roused that feeling in him, he voted with the republican party, as most likely to prevail against the protectorate, and thus pave the way to monarchy. Besides these, there were many neutrals or moderates, and a considerable sprinkling of young royalists, who, by Charles's advice, had got in under other colours.
However much these parties differed amongst themselves, there were sufficient of them adverse to the protectorate to commence an immediate attack upon it. They foil at once to debating the legality of the "Petition and Advice," and of course the government by a single person and two houses. They asked what was the "Petition and Advice," and they declared it to be an instrument of no force, passed by a very small majority of a house from which a hundred members had been forcibly excluded. The debates on this question were long and violent. Though parliament met on the 27th of January, it was the 14th of February before they had decided that Richard's right to the protectorate should be settled by another bill, but with much restricted prerogative, and it was not till the 28th of March that they allowed the right of the other house to sit, but with no superiority to the commons, and with no authority to send messages to it except by members of the house. These points settled, there were high demands for a searching inquiry into the management of all departments of the state, with heavy charges of waste, embezzlement, oppression, and tyranny, in the collection of the excise. Threats of impeachment were held out against Thurloe and the principal ministers, as well as against Butler and some others of the officers.
This aroused the generals, who were themselves divided into two great factions. One set met at Whitehall under Ingoldsby, Whalley, Goffe, lord Charles Howard, and others favourable to the protector; another, under Fleetwood and Desborough, met at Wallingford House, who, though the protector's relations, were bent on their own and the army's ascendancy. They were joined by Lambert, who, after being deprived of his commission, had remained at Wimbledon, cultivating his garden, and seeming to be forgotten; but now he came forth again, was received with enthusiasm by the soldiers, who had great confidence in his ability, and he and Desborough used to meet with a third party, consisting chiefly of the inferior officers, at St. James's.
At this place of meeting a council of officers was organised, which soon became influential with the Wallingford House or Fleetwood's section. Here they drew up an address to Richard, complaining of the arrears of their pay being withheld, and of the neglect with which the army was treated; of the attempts to overthrow the acts passed by the Long Parliament, and the encouragement thereby given to the royalists, who were flocking over from Flanders, and exciting discontent against "the good old cause," and against the persons and interests of those who had shed their blood for the commonwealth. This address was presented on the 14th of April by Fleetwood, with no less than six hundred signatures. Though it did not even mention the name of this parliament, that body felt that it was directed entirely against them, and immediately voted that no meeting or general council of officers should be held without the consent and order of the protector, and that no person should hold any command by sea or land who did not immediately sign an engagement that he would not in any way disturb or prevent the free meeting and debates of parliament, or the freedom of any member of parliament. This was certain to produce a retort from the army—it was an open declaration of war upon it—and accordingly Fleetwood and Desborough waited on Richard and assured him that it was absolutely necessary to dissolve the parliament; and Desborough, who was a bold, rough soldier, declared that if he did not do it, he felt sure the army would soon pull him out of Whitehall.
Richard Cromwell signing his Abdication.
It may be questioned how far this declaration was warranted by the real facts of the case. The majority of the army was probably opposed to any violence being shown to the son of the great protector, but in critical times it is the small knot of restless, unscrupulous spirits who rule the inert mass, and impose their own views upon the sluggish and the timid; and Desborough well knew the irresolute and impressionable character of Richard Cromwell.
On the other hand, many members of parliament protested that they would stand by him, that if he allowed the army to suppress the parliament, he would find it immediately his own roaster, and would he left without a friend. Ingoldsby, Goffe, and Whalley supported this view, and one of them offered to go and kill Lambert, who was the originater of all the mischief. Richard called a council to consider the proposition: Whitelock represented the danger of dissolving the parliament, and leaving himself at the mercy of the army; but Thurloe, lord Broghill, Fiennes, and Wolseley declared there was no alternative, for if the army and parliament came to strife, the cavaliers would rise and bring in Charles. Richard reluctantly gave way, and on the 22nd of April he signed a commission empowering Fiennes, the keeper of the seal, to dissolve the parliament. Fiennes summoned the commons to the upper house by the usher of the black rod, but they shut the door in the face of that officer, and refused to obey, adjourning themselves for three days. Fiennes, however, declared the parliament dissolved, the commons having been duly summoned to witness it, and a proclamation was issued to that effect.
The warning of Whitelock was immediately verified; the moment that the parliament ceased, all regard to Richard by the army ceased with it. From that moment he was utterly deserted except by the small knot of officers—Goffe, Whalley, and Ingoldsby, and he was as completely annihilated as protector as if all parties had deposed him by assent and proclamation. The council of officers proceeded to take measures for the exercise of the supreme power. They placed guards to prevent the adjourned commons retaking their seats at Westminster as they proposed, and by their own authority dismissed Ingoldsby, Goffe, Whalley, and the other officers who had adhered to Richard, from their commands in the army, and restored Lambert and all the others who had been cashiered by Oliver. Having thus restored the republicanism of the army, they determined to recall the Rump, as a body that they believed they could command; and they accordingly issued an order for the reassembling of the house of commons which Oliver had so unceremoniously dismissed on the 20th of April, 1653. At this call, Lenthall, the old speaker of the Rump, with about forty or fifty members of the Rump, hastened the next day to Westminster, where Lambert kept guard with the troops, and after some discussion in the Painted Chamber, they went in a body to the house through two files of Lambert's soldiers, and took their places as a real parliament. But their claim to this exclusive right was immediately disputed. The same day, the 7th of May, a large number of the members who had been excluded by Pride's purge, in 1648, of whom one hundred and ninety-four were still alive, and eighty of them residing in the capital, assembled in Westminster Hall, and sent up to the house a deputation of fourteen, headed by Prynne, Annesley, and Sir George Booth, to demand equal liberty to sit; but as this would have overwhelmed them with a presbyterian majority, the doors were closed against them: they were kept back by the soldiers who filled the lobby, who were ironically called "the keepers of the liberties of England," and they were informed that no member could sit who had not already signed the engagement. On the 9th, however, Prynne made his way into the house, and kept his seat, spite of all efforts to dislodge him, till dinner time; but going out to dine, he found himself shut out on his return.
The Rump now proceeded to appoint a committee of safety, and then a council of state, which included Fairfax, Lambert, Desborough, Bradshaw, Fleetwood, Ashley Cooper, Haselrig, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, and Whitelock. Letters were received from Monk in Scotland, congratulating the Rump on their return to power, but hypocritically begging them to keep in mind the services of Cromwell and his family. Lockhart sent over from Flanders the tendered services of the regiments there, and was confirmed in his office of ambassador, and also was commissioned to attend a conference betwixt the ministers of France and Spain, to be held at Fuentarabia, whither Charles Stuart had also betaken himself. Montague sent in the adhesion of the fleet, and, what was still more consoling, Henry Cromwell, whose opposition in Ireland was much dreaded, resigned his office, and was permitted to retire into private life.
The Wallingford House party of officers alone created serious apprehension. They sent in a list of fifteen demands from their own creatures of the house, which were immediately taken into consideration, and the Rump successively voted, in compliance, that a form of government should be passed calculated to preserve the liberties of the people, and that it should contain no single person as protector, nor house of peers. That liberty of conscience should be allowed to all believers in the Scriptures who held the doctrine of the Trinity, except papists and prelatists. But one of these demands was for lands of inheritance to be settled on Richard Cromwell to the value of ten thousand pounds a year, and a pension on her highness, his mother, of ten thousand pounds a year. On this it was remarked, that Richard was still occupying Whitehall as if he were protector, and they made it conditional that he should remove thence. They proposed that if he retired voluntarily from the protectorate, they would grant him twenty-nine thousand pounds for the discharge of his debts, two thousand pounds for present necessities, and ten thousand pounds to him and his heirs. Richard cheerfully agreed, and retired, but his pension was never paid. After going to the continent for some time after the restoration, Richard returned and lived peaceably on his estate at Cheshunt, or at the old manor of Mardon, at Hursley, near Winchester, which he received with Dorothy Major, and there spent a jolly life in old English state till the term of eighty years. During his father's life, he is said in convivial hours to have drank the health of his father's landlord, Charles Stuart; and there he had a chest which contained all the addresses and congratulations, even the protestations of profound fidelity from all the corporations, congregations, and almost all the public men, and on this chest he would seat himself in his jocund hours, amongst his convivial friends, and boast that he was sitting on the lives and fortunes of most of the leading men of England. Henry Cromwell also passed his life as a quiet country gentleman on his estate of Swinney, near Sohan, in Cambridgeshire, till his death in 1674. His government of Ireland was, on his resigning, put into the hands of five commissioners, and the command of the army was given to Ludlow.
Charles and his party abroad, watching the continual bickerings of their enemies in England, put in motion all their machinery to create confusion, and to seize the opportunity of taking every possible means of procuring a revolt amongst them. Charles, to encourage his partisans, announced his intention of coming to England to head them. The 1st of August was fixed on for a rising, and Charles hastened into Boulogne, to be ready to pass over into Wales or Cornwall. The duke of York was to lead over six hundred of the prince of Condé's veterans, and, crossing from Boulogne, land on the coast of Kent, whilst the duke of Gloucester was to proceed from Ostend with four thousand troops under marshal Marsin. Unfortunately for them, all their plans had been revealed to Thurloe by Sir Richard Willis, one of the king's sealed knot of seven trusted confidants. Convinced that from this treason the enterprise would fail, Charles sent circular letters to stop the rising. But these in many instances arrived too late. Many appeared in arms, and were fallen upon and routed or taken prisoners by the parliamentarians. Sir John Gore was arrested, the lady Mary Howard, daughter of the earl of Berkshire, and many other persons of distinction, were arrested on charges of high treason. In Cheshire Sir George Booth erected the royal standard, and took possession of Chester; but on learning the news of the king's deferring the enterprise, and that general Lambert was marching against them, he and his associates fled to Nantwich, where Lambert overtook and totally routed them. Colonel Morgan, with thirty of his men, fell on the field; the earl of Derby was taken disguised as a servant; Sir Thomas Middleton, who was eighty years old, fled to Chirk Castle, but soon surrendered; and Booth himself, disguised as a woman, and riding on a pillion, was betrayed and taken on the road to London, near Newton Pagnell. This unlucky outbreak and defeat threw the adherents of Charles abroad into despair. Montague, the admiral, who had been won over, and had brought his fleet to the mouth of the Thames to facilitate the passage of the king's troops, pretended that he had come for provisions, and, though he was suspected, he was allowed to return to his station. Charles himself, driven to despair, made a journey to Fuentarabia, where Mazarin and the Don Louis de Haro, the ministers of France and Spain, were engaged in a treaty, in the hope that, if it were concluded, he might obtain some support from them. But he was very coldly received; Mazarin would not even see him. In fact, his fortunes were apparently at the lowest ebb, but it was in reality only the dark hour before the dawn. The day of his fortune was at hand.
The parliament, on Lambert's victory, voted him thanks and one thousand pounds to purchase a jewel in memory of it; but Lambert distributed the money amongst his soldiers. The parliament resenting this, regarded it as intended to win the soldiers to his cause, that he might tread in Cromwell's steps, and make himself dictator. It was well known that he had entertained great hopes of being named his successor, and this suspicion was immediately confirmed by his officers, whilst on their march at Derby, signing a petition, and sending it up with a demand that Fleetwood should be made permanently commander-in-chief, and Lambert his lieutenant-general. No sooner did Haselrig see this petition, than he denounced it as an attempt to overturn the parliament, and moved the committal of Lambert and its author to the Tower. But Fleetwood repelled the charge by assuring them that Lambert, who was already in town when the petition was got up, knew nothing of it. The house, however, ordered all copies of the paper to be destroyed, and voted that any addition to the number of officers was needless, chargeable, and dangerous. At the same time they proceeded to conciliate the soldiers by advancing their pay, and, to discharge their arrears, on the 5th of October they raised the monthly assessment from thirty-five thousand pounds to one hundred thousand pounds.
Matters were, however, gone too far to be thus settled betwixt the parliament and the army. Haselrig, Scott, and their associates were of that class of sanguine republicans, who in their zeal think only of the principles they wish to establish, without calculating how far the country is prepared for them, and thus blindly rush on their own defeat. The Wallingford House military council prepared another paper called a petition, but being far more of a hostile communication, declaring that whoever cast scandalous imputations on the army should be brought to condign punishment. That was distinct enough, but Haselrig and his party had got the adhesion of three regiments, and relied on the promises of Monk in Scotland, and Ludlow in Ireland. On the 11th of October a vote was passed, declaring it high treason to levy any money on the people without consent of parliament, and, therefore, as all the existing taxes expired on the first day of the new year, Haselrig's party believed they had thus rendered the army wholly dependent on them. The very next day Haselrig moved and carried a motion that Desborough, Lambert, six colonels, and a major, were deprived of their commissions for signing the late petition. By another vote Fleetwood was deprived of the office of commander-in-chief, but made president of a board of seven members, for the management of the army. The blind zealots had witnessed to little purpose the history of late years, and the movements of armies. On the next day Lambert, with three thousand men, marched into Westminster, where he found the parliament house guarded by two regiments of foot, and four troops of horse. On his way he met the speaker, attended by a guard. He ordered the officer to dismount, and on refusing, according to Clarendon, pulled him from his horse, and sent Lenthall, the speaker, to his own house. The soldiers, on the two parties meeting, at once coalesced, and the Rump was once more dismissed. The officers at Wallingford House took upon themselves to annul Hazelrig's votes of the last three days, and establish a provisional committee of twenty-three members. There was a party amongst them for restoring Richard Cromwell, who came up from Hampshire escorted by three troops of horse; but this party was outvoted by a small majority, and he retired again.
Whilst these confused changes were taking place, eddies in the national affairs, but neither progress nor honour, the parliament having no power to restrain the army, nor the army any one man of a genius capable of controlling the rest, there was at least one commander who was silently and reservedly watching the course of events, resolved to go with the strongest side, if such a side could be found. This was general Monk. He was originally a royalist, and of a strongly royalist family. His elder brother had always been zealously devoted to the king, with the rest of his relations, and it is said that his wife was a most ardent advocate for the king's interest. These circumstances had caused Charles frequently to endeavour to sound him by his emissaries; but though he received them courteously, and listened patiently to their statements, he gave no outward evidence that he was likely to comply with their entreaties. He was a man of a deep and impenetrable secrecy and caution, of few words, and a gloomy, unimpassioned manner. Cromwell, during his life, was quite aware of the overtures and royal promises made to Monk, but could not discover the slightest thing in him to warrant a suspicion of his leaning in the smallest degree that way, and he therefore contented himself with jocularly remarking to him in a postscript in one of his letters, "'Tis said there is a cunning fellow in Scotland, called George Monk, who lies in wait there to serve Charles Stuart; pray use your diligence to take him, and send him up to me."
There was not much likelihood of Monk swerving from the commonwealth while the strong man Cromwell lived, but now, amid such scenes of weakness, he no doubt began to feel that the royal party would have to be recalled. Such a presentiment, however, lay locked deep in his taciturn breast. The officers sent colonel Cobbet to Monk in Scotland, who, however, expressed his firm adherence to the commons, and when he heard of what Lambert and the officers had done, he Tote strong letters to them, complaining of the violence which they had done to the power and authority of parliament. He imprisoned Cobbet, and purging his army of all who were fanatics or inclined to Lambert and his party, he sent them under guard to the borders, and dismissed them into England, under penalty of death if they returned. He immediately placed strong garrisons in the castle of Edinburgh and in the citadel of Leith, and, collecting cavalry, marched to Berwick, where he placed a strong garrison. Letters were written to Lenthall in the name of himself and his officers, assuring the parliamentary party that "he called God to witness that the asserting of the commonwealth was the only interest of his heart." Whilst Haselrig, Lenthail, and the rest were gratified by these protestations, they remarked, however, with wonder, and soon with deep suspicion, that he had cashiered all those officers that they had introduced into his army, and restored those they had expelled. There was no alternative, however, but to act with him and watch him. In the meantime Monk had called a convention of the Scottish estates at Berwick, and informing them that "he had received a call from heaven arid earth to march into England for the better settling of the government there," he recommended the peace of the kingdom to their care, and obtained from them a grant of sixty thousand pounds, from the arrears of taxes. He then took up his headquarters at Coldstream, and waited the course of events.
The committee of safety, on hearing of the movements of Monk, despatched Lambert with an army of seven thousand men to meet him on his march, and if he could not win him to co-operation with the rest of the army, to resist his advance by force. But having seen Lambert on his way northward, the committee sent directly to Blonk a deputation to endeavour to bring him over to their views, by offers of many advantages. Monk received the deputation very courteously, expressed every desire to unite with the rest of the army, provided there were some riding power to whom all parties might be subject, and sent three commissioners to treat with the committee of safety on the subject. This greatly encouraged the committee of safety, who thought their sending Lambert against Monk had frightened him, and whilst they prepared to receive Monk's commissioners, they ordered Lambert to hasten on his march.
But affairs nearer home were every day becoming more dis heartening Haselrig and Morley had gone down to Portsmouth, where they were well received by the governor, and were looked up to as representing the authority of parliament Fleetwood sent down troops to oppose them, but the troops themselves went over to them. This success encouraged the apprentices and other dissatisfied persons in Loudon to rise, and demand the restoration of the parliament; and though colonel Hewson attacked and killed some of them, the spirit and the disturbances only grew the stronger. To finish the matter, admiral Lawson appeared with the fleet in the Thames, and declared for the parliament on the 17th of December, and, as soon as they heard this, Haselrig and Morley marched with their forces to London. At their approach the troops in Westminster revolted from the committee and joined thorn, declaring they would live and die with the parliament. They received those officers who had lately been dismissed, and all marched into Lincoln's Inn Fields, and so to Chancery Lane, where they halted before Lenthalls house, fired three volleys of musketry, and hailed him not only speaker of the commons, but lord-general of the army. This was on Christmas eve, and Desborough's regiment, which Lambert had sent back to check these counter-movements, on hearing this news, at St. Albans, also declared for the parliament, and sent the speaker word of the adhesion. During all this reaction, Fleetwood had still sate with the committee of safety, but exhibiting the strangest want of courage and decision. When urged to go and use his influence with the soldiers, to prevent their defection, he fell on his knees and prayed, or declared that it was useless, that "God had spit in his face, and would not hear him."
Whitelock relates that at this juncture he strongly advised Fleetwood to join him and go away to the king, convinced that Monk was deceiving the parliament, and that the return of Charles was inevitable. He said, therefore, that it was better to get away to him and make terms for themselves and friends whilst the time allowed. Fleetwood was convinced, and ordered Whitelock to prepare for the journey; but Vane, Desborough, and Berry coming in, he quickly altered his mind, and declared that ho had pledged his word to Lambert before he marched to do nothing of the kind without his consent. "Whitelock repeated that if he did not do it, then all was lost; but Fleetwood, weak but honourable, replied he could not help it; his word was pledged: and in the end he submitted himself to the parliament.
Lenthall, the speaker, at the head of a party of soldiers who made themselves merry on their new lord-general, went into the city, informed the lord mayor and aldermen that the parliament was assembling, and, on his own authority, ordered from the Tower the governor and officers put there by the committee of safety, and placed in command Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, who had brought in admiral Lawson, assisted by several members of parliament. On the 26th of December the Rump met again in that house from which they had twice been so ignominiously expelled. Their first proceeding was to annul their act against the payment of excise and customs, so that they might not be without money, and their next to dismiss Lambert, Desborough, Berry, and other officers, and to order them to retire further from London; and they ordered Vane, who had adhered to the committee of safety, to confine himself to his house at Raby. Thus they were throwing down with their own hands the very bulwarks which should prevent their falling helplessly into the power of Monk and his army. Still more, they sent an order to Lambert's regiments to quit their commander, and retire to such quarters as they appointed. The soldiers having heard of their comrades in the south having gone over to the parliament, did not hesitate to obey its orders, and Lambert found himself left alone with only about a hundred horse. At Northallerton his officers took their leave of him with tears, and he retired quietly to a house which he had in the country. Thus the expectation of a sharp encounter betwixt Monk and Lambert was at an end, and the road was open to Monk to march to London without opposition.
He had received assurances from lord Fairfax, that within twelve days he would join him or perish in the attempt, and he forthwith called together his friends, and demanded the surrender of York. On the 1st of January the gates of York were thrown open to Fairfax and his followers, and that same day Monk commenced his march southward from Coldstream. Monk remained five days at York in consultation with Fairfax, who did not hesitate to avow his readiness to assist in the restoration of the king. Clarendon tells us that the king had sent Sir Horatio Townsend to Fairfax, expressing confident hopes of Monk, and requiring him to co-operate with him; and the parliament had become so apprehensive of him, that before his arrival at York, they wrote to him, advising him to send back part of his forces to Scotland, as being needless now in England, and might prevent danger in Scotland. Monk paid no attention, and the parliament began to wish him back in Scotland altogether. But it does not appear that Monk in any way committed himself to Fairfax by his words, whatever his conduct might indicate. On the contrary, at York he caned an officer who charged him with a design of bringing in Charles Stuart. On his quitting York, Fairfax disbanded his forces, and Monk pursued his march in the same mysterious silence. The parliament had appointed a council of state, and framed the oath for its members to embrace a most stringent abjuration of royalty and of the Stuart family. The soldiers sympathising with the parliament, the officers, on reaching Nottingham, proposed signing an engagement to obey the parliament in all things except the bringing in of Charles Stuart. Monk declared this unnecessary, parliament having expressed itself so strongly on that head; and at Leicester he wrote a reply to certain royalist petitioners in Devonshire, stating his confidence that monarchy could not be reintroduced, that the excluded members of 1648 could not be safely reinstated, and that it was their bounden duty to obey and support the present government.
At Leicester arrived two of the most democratic members of parliament, Scott and Robinson, to watch his proceedings, but ostensibly to do him honour. He received them with all respect, and such was his apparent devotion to parliament, that they were thoroughly satisfied and highly delighted. At every place he was met by addresses from towns and counties, praying him to restore the excluded members, and procure a full and free parliament. He replied on all occasions that he was but the servant of parliament in a military capacity, and referred the applicants to the two deputies for their answers. These gentlemen, who were vehemently opposed to any such restoration of the excluded members, gave very free denials, with which Monk did not in any way interfere.
This conduct, we are assured by Clarendon, extremely confounded Charles and his partisans, who had calculated greatly on Monk's secret inclinations, but the dispersion of Lambert's forces, the retirement of Fairfax, and the vigorous adherence of Monk to the parliament, puzzled and depressed them. It might have been supposed that though Monk had so impenetrably concealed his designs from the adherents of the commonwealth, that he had a secret understanding with the king. Clarendon, who was fully in the king's confidence, and his great adviser, solemnly assures us that there was nothing of the kind; that all attempts to arrive at his purpose had been unavailing. By the consent of Charles, Monk's brother, a clergyman in Devonshire, had been induced by Sir Hugh Pollard and Sir John Grenville, the king's agents, to visit the general in the north, and endeavour to persuade him to declare for the king. But Monk took him up very shortly, and advised him to go home and come no more to him with such propositions. To the last moment this secret and solemn man kept the same immovable, impenetrable course. There is little doubt but that he felt, from the miserable weakness and disunion of both the officers and the parliamentary leaders, the great all-controlling mind being gone, that the king must come again, and that he was ready to do the work at the safe moment. But that till he was positively certain the way was clear of every obstacle, no power on earth should move him. It is probable that he was indifferent to the fact whether the king or the parliament ruled, but that he would decide for the strongest when it was unmistakably the strongest, and not till then.
To prevent alarm to the parliament, he brought only five thousand troops with him from York, being much fewer than those which were quartered in London and Westminster; but from St. Alban's on the 28th of January he wrote to the speaker, requesting that five of the regiments there might be removed to other quarters before his arrival, lest there should arise strife betwixt his soldiers and those so lately engaged in rebellion against the parliament. This startled the parliament, and dull must those members have been who did not perceive that they committed a series of gross blunders in destroying the greater part of the army, and disbanding their best officers, to clear the stage for a new master. But there was nothing for it but complying. They ordered the regiments to remove, but they refused. Why, they asked, were they to quit their quarters to make room for strangers? Was it expected that they should march away with several weeks' pay in arrears? But their officers, who should have supported them, were dismissed or under restraint, and by coaxing and the distribution of some money, they were induced to go. The greatest difficulty was found with a regiment which occupied Somerset House, and declared they would hold it as a garrison and defend it. But at length they, too, were persuaded to retire, and the next day, the 3rd of February, Monk marched through the only into the Strand and Westminster, where his soldiers were quartered, and himself conducted to Whitehall.
General Monk. From an authentic Portrait.
LANDING OF CHARLES II. AT DOVER.
On the 9th of February, two hours after midnight, he received this trying order. He reflected—if he refused his commission would be immediately withdrawn, and his plans cut short; he obeyed, and marching into the city, began with all coolness and imperturbability to remove the posts and chains from the streets. The citizens, who expected different conduct from him, and entreated him earnestly to desist, assailed his men during their labour with groans and hisses. The post and chains removed, Monk wrote to the parliament that he considered that sufficient to crush the refractory spirit of the citizens, but he received a peremptory order to complete the business, which he did by destroying the gates and portcullises, though the soldiers themselves loudly expressed their indignation. He then returned in no agreeable mood to Whitehall. There, however, news awaited him of conduct on the part of parliament, which seemed to him to show that they now thought that they had made him their pliant instrument, and destroyed at the same time his popularity with the people. Whilst he had been doing their ungracious work in the city, they had been receiving with high approbation a petition from the so-called fanatic or ultra party, headed by the celebrated Barebone, praying that no man might sit in parliament, or hold any office under government, who did not take the oath to abjure Charles Stuart or any single person. This was so plainly aimed at himself, who had excused himself from this oath, that a council of his officers was immediately called, whose loud resentment of this ungrateful conduct was expressed in a letter drawn up in his name, and despatched to the house the next morning, complaining bitterly of their allowing this attack upon him and advising that they should take immediate measures for filling up all the vacancies in parliament, as the only measure which would satisfy the people. To show that this was not a mere admonition but a command, he instantly quitted Whitehall, marched back into the city, summoned again the common council, which he had dispersed, and assured them that the conduct of parliament had now convinced him that they were betraying the interests of the country, that he was sorry that he had obeyed them so far as to do injury to "that famous city, which in all ages had been the bulwark of parliament and of general liberty;" and that therefore he had determined to unite his lot with theirs, and to obtain through them a full and free parliament.
This announcement was received not only with astonishment, but with the most enthusiastic expressions of joy. The mayor and council plighted their troth with him and the officers, he was invited to dine at the Guildhall, and all the bells in the city were set ringing in exultation. The corporation attended the general to his lodgings amid the acclamations and the bonfires of the people, at which they roasted rumps in ridicule of the parliament, and heaped on it every infamy which wit and ribaldry could devise. This coup d'etat awoke the parliament to their blunder; they had made an enemy of the very man and army into whose hands they had put a power which could instantly crush them. There were some zealots, the Haselrigs and Scots, who advised to replace Fleetwood in the chief command, and bring back the expelled regiments; but Sunday, which intervened, enabled the more sober counsel to prevail, and they sent a deputation to invite the general to return to Whitehall, and promised that the writs for the excluded members should be ready by the day appointed. But these incidents had made an advance in Monk's proceedings. He had seen, as he came up the country, the universal demand for the restoration of the Long Parliament, and the unmitigated contempt for the present one. He had felt the pulse of the country also as to the return of the king, and his intercourse with the city had only confirmed the impression that the whole body of excluded members must come back as a stepping-stone to the recall of Charles. The presbyterian interest in the city was as strong as ever, and its enmity to the independents unabated. He therefore called together his officers to discuss with the deputation the points at issue, and the officers insisted that the excluded members must be restored. Monk then placed the city in a state of defence, and returned to Whitehall. There he summoned the excluded members who were in town, together with the members of the sitting parliament, and read them a paper, in which he assured them that the nation at large demanded a full and free parliament, as the only means of settling these bleeding nations. He declared that he would impose no restrictions on them himself, but that his guards should freely admit all the excluded as well as the other members, to take measures for a dissolution of the present parliament, and the calling of a new one, full and free, on the 20th of April next. That he did not believe that monarchy or prelacy would be tolerated by the people, but that a moderate presbyterian government, with liberty of conscience, appeared most likely to be acceptable. That as to the peers, if it were not proper to restore to them their house, yet he thought their hereditary marks of honour should be left them.
This speech equally confounded the royalists and the ultras. He recommended a presbyterian government and the exclusion of the monarchy; but he saw well enough what the effect of his measure would be; the royalist excluded members would rush in, and the recall of the king would be the inevitable consequence. Accordingly the excluded members proceeded directly to the house with the other members. The guard under Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper opened and admitted them. At this sight Haselrig, Scott, and the republican party, thought it high time to consult their own security, and disappeared from the house. The house at once set to work; annulled all the orders by which they had been excluded; elected a new council of state, in which the most influential members were royalists; appointed Monk commander-in-chief, and commander of the fleet in conjunction with Montague; granted him twenty thousand pounds in lieu of Hampton Court, which the Rump had settled on him; freed from sequestration Sir George Booth and his associates, who had risen for the king, together with a great number of cavaliers and Scottish lords taken at the battle of Worcester; borrowed sixty thousand pounds of the common council; established for the present the presbyterian confession of faith; ordered copies of the solemn league and covenant to be hung up in all churches; placed the militia, and all the chief commands throughout the kingdom, in the hand of the principal nobility and gentry; and only stipulated that no person should be capable of office or command who did not subscribe to the confession—"that the war raised by the two houses of parliament against the late king was just and lawful, until such time as force and violence were used upon the parliament in the year 1648."
But at this point it was contended by the royalists that the house of lords was as much a house as themselves, and that they could not legally summon a new parliament without them; but Monk would listen to nothing of this kind. He declared that as much had been conceded as the country would bear; and the parliament was reluctantly compelled to dissolve itself at the time fixed.
There could certainly be no longer any uncertainty as to whither all this was tending. The royalists were again in full power all over the kingdom, the very insurgents in the cause of Charles were liberated, freed from all penalties, and in many cases advanced to places of trust; yet Monk still dissembled. Ludlow, a staunch republican, on the readmission of the excluded members, went to Monk to sound him as to his intentions, and urged the necessity of supporting the commonwealth, which had cost them so much. Monk replied with solemn hypocrisy, "Yea, we must live and die together for a commonwealth." Yet Monk had now made up his mind: he saw that all was prepared, all perfectly safe, and during the recess he was busy arranging with the king's agents for his return. Immediately on Monk's joyful reception by the city, a Mr. Baillie, who had gone through Cheapside amongst the bonfires, and heard the king's health drunk in various places, and people talking of sending for the king, had posted off to Brussels, where Charles was. On this Sir John Grenville and a Mr. Morrice, a Devonshire royalist, were instantly sent over to Monk, with propositions for the king's return. Clarendon assures us that so early as the beginning of April these gentlemen were in London, and in consultation with Monk, who told them that if the king would write a letter to parliament containing the same statements, he would find a fit time to deliver it, or some other means to serve his majesty; but that Charles must quit Flanders to give his partisans confidence that he was out of the power of the Spaniards, and would be free to act on their call; that he must go to Breda, and date his papers thence.
All this was done, and so little secrecy was observed by the royalists on the continent, that it was immediately known at all the courts that the king was about to be recalled, and Spaniards, Dutch, French princes and ministers, who had treated Charles with the utmost neglect and contempt, now overwhelmed him with compliments, invitations, flatteries, and offers. The Dutch court, where the mother of the young Stadtholder was his sister, had been as uncourteous as the rest, but they now united in receiving him and doing him honour. Breda already swarmed with English royalists, who flocked from every quarter to pay their court.
All this was observed in England with a complacency which sufficiently indicated that men's minds were made up to the restoration of the monarchy. The ultra-republican party alone, whose zeal never condescended to measure the chances against them, endeavoured to raise the soldiers to oppose the menaced catastrophe. The army had on all former occasions maintained the commonwealth. The emissaries of the republicans, therefore, spread themselves everywhere amongst the soldiers, warning them of the certainty of all their sacrifices, their labours, and their victories being in vain if they did not once more save the state. The old fire revived; the soldiers contemplated the loss of their arrears if the royalists came into power, the officers the loss of their lands and their commands. They began to express vehement discontent, and the officers flocked into the capital and called on Monk to take measures for the maintenance of the commonwealth. He professed to be bound to that object, though he had at the time in his pocket a commission from Charles constituting him lord-general of all the military in the three kingdoms. He ordered the officers to return to their posts, and put an oath, of obedience to the parliament to the privates—all who refused it being discharged.
Disappointed in this quarter, the republicans managed to effect the escape of Lambert, who bad been committed to the Tower, and who now appeared in Warwickshire, where he induced six troops of horse and some infantry to accept his command. On the approach of general Ingoldsby, however, who was sent against him, his troops deserted him, he was captured, and conducted back to the Tower with every indignity.
On the 25th of April the new parliament assembled; the royalists showed a decided majority, and though the presbyterian party managed to carry the election of Sir Harbottle Grimstone as speaker, the royalist tendency was overwhelming as to the main object. Ten of the peers assembled in their house, and elected the earl of Manchester speaker, and on beholding this the rest of the peers hurried up to town, and soon appeared a full house, excepting such peers as had served in the king's parliament at Oxford, or whose patents dated subsequently to the commencement of the civil war.
But all the interest was concentrated on the proceedings of the house of commons. On the 1st of May Sir John Grenville presented himself at the door of the house, and requested to speak with the lord-general. Monk went to him, and received, as a matter of which he knew nothing, a letter addressed to the speaker. Looking at the seal, and affecting to discover that it bore the royal arms, he ordered the guards to take care that the bearer did not escape. Grenville was speedily called in, and asked how he became possessed of this letter, and on replying that he brought it from the king, he was ordered into custody as a traitor. But here Monk interfered, saying that this was unnecessary; he perceived that he was a kinsman of his, and would be security for him. The letters were now opened, and proved to be really from the king, one addressed to the commons, another to the lords, a third to the lord mayor and corporation, and the fourth to Monk and Montague, lord-admirals. In the letter to the commons Charles informed them that, in the present unhappy circumstances of the nation, he recommended them to consider whether the only way to restore all to peace and prosperity was not to return to the ancient and time-honoured constitution of king, lords, and commons, under whom the kingdom had flourished so many ages. He professed that no man had a more profound veneration for parliament and its rights than himself, and that to convince them of it, he had indorsed a declaration of his views, in which he had left everything to their settlement.
This paper was the celebrated "Declaration of Breda," to which the people afterwards so often called Charles's attention, and which he took the earliest opportunity to forget, and falsify by a return to all the Stuart despotisms, oppressions, and persecutions. In this paper he granted a free pardon to all who should accept it within forty days; the confirmation of all estates and titles, and in religion "liberty to tender consciences, and that no man should be disturbed or called in question in any way regarding religion." But all these promises "on the word of a king" were rendered perfectly nugatory, by excepting all such persons and such measures as parliament should in its wisdom see fit to determine otherwise. This specious declaration, which had been drawn up by Hyde, Ormond, and Nicholas, in fact secured nothing, for once in power, a servile parliament might undo everything, as it eventually did. Prynne, who was in the house, pointed all this out, and warned them that Charles had been too long under the counsels of his mother, and too long in France and in Flanders, "the most Jesuited place in the world," to be in religion anything better than a papist. That at best he would be found only a prelatist, and that his word had already been proved, on various occasions, of no more value than his father's. That the royalists, he said, would never cease instilling into him that the presbyterian religion, now the religion of the nation, had destroyed his great-grandmother, tormented his grandfather, and put to death his father; and that as certain as there was a restoration, there would be a destruction of all the liberties of England, civil and religious. The pious Sir Matthew Hale urged on them the necessity of some better guarantee than this declaration of constitutional rights before they readmitted the king.
But all warning was lost on the house: the crisis was come, the parliament and nation seemed smitten with a sudden oblivion of all their past miseries and oppressions under this house, and every branch of the community seemed impatient to be the first to put its neck once more under the Stuart yoke, and under the foot of the most debauched, unprincipled, and scandalous member of it, that it had ever given birth to. Instead of sending Grenville to the Tower, the commons voted him thanks and a present of five hundred pounds. The speaker, in communicating these votes to Grenville, launched into the most extravagant terms of joy on the prospect "of having their king again." The commons drew up a most glowing letter to his majesty, in which they declared their thankfulness to God for putting the thoughts of returning into the king's mind, "to make him glorious in the eyes of his people;" protesting that "the persons of their kings had always been dear unto parliaments," and that they "could not bear to think of that horrid act committed against the precious life of their late king," &c. They not only delivered this letter to Sir John Grenville, but appointed twelve of their members to wait on his majesty at the Hague. The London corporation were as enthusiastic and as profuse of their proffered devotion; they presented Grenville with three hundred pounds, also appointed some of their members to wait on the king, made haste to erect the royal statue in Guildhall, and to pull down the arms of the commonwealth.
Montague had long been prepared to go over to the king on the first opportunity; and lest he might seem to be sent by the parliament, and not by his own voluntary act, he set sail for the coast of Holland, leaving Lawson to bring over the deputations going to his majesty. He lay to at Scheveling, and sent word to the king that the fleet was at his command. The duke of York, whom Charles had made admiral, went on board, and was received with all respect and submission. Soon after came up the other ships with six members of the peers, twelve of the commons, fourteen from the city of London, and eight or ten of the most popular ministers of London of the presbyterian party, including Reynolds, Calamy, Case, and Marten. These gentlemen entered zealously on the hopeless task of endeavouring to persuade Charles to leave their form of worship in the ascendant, and to abstain from the use of the common prayer book and the surplices; but they got no further satisfaction than that he would leave all that to the wisdom of parliament. On the 24th of May he embarked at Scheveling, in the Naseby, which the day before had been re-christened the Royal Charles, the rest of the ships at the same time having doffed their republican appellations of unpleasant memory, and assumed right royal ones. On the 26th he landed at Dover, where, amid the thunder of cannon, he was received by Monk at the head of a splendid assemblage of the nobility and gentry. From Dover to Canterbury, and thence to London, the royal journey was one triumphant procession. The crowds of gentry, the shouting people, presented only the aspect of a most loyal nation, amongst whom it could scarcely be imagined such a thing as a commonwealth had been enacted. On Blackheath he was received by the army with acclamations. The lord mayor and corporation invited his majesty to a splendid collation in a tent prepared for the purpose, and all the way thence to Whitehall, attended by the chief nobility and by his life guards, and several regiments of cavalry, the houses being hung with tapestry, and the windows crowded with applauding people, the king riding betwixt his two brothers, beheld nothing but a most loyal people. When he dismissed the last of his congratulators from the hall where his father perished, he turned to one of his confidants and said, "It surely must have been my own fault that I did not come before, for I have met no one to-day who did not protest that he always wished for my restoration."