CROMWELL 603 made to feel the invincible power of his government, it was in his relations with foreign states that the commanding genius of Oliver was most conspicuously displayed. No monarch ever so sustained in the eyes of Europe tho majesty of the British power. The grand object of his foreign policy was to unite the Protestant states, with Britain at their head, in a defensive league against Popery, then as now the enemy of civil and religious liberty. Spain, " the great underpropper of the Roman Babylon," the " natural enemy of the honest interest," he determined to humble, and in due time he did. With France, less subject to the yoke of Rome, he allied himself, making such terms as he pleased, extorting from the crafty Mazarin, 1 a prince of the Church of Rome, protection for Rome s enemies, and full pardon for offences committed against her in the heart of France itself ! In the summer of 1655 the persecution of the Protestants in the valleys of Piedmont afforded an occasion for displaying in the noblest light the greatness of the Protector and of the nation which he represented. The tidings of these cruel oppressions affected the stern conqueror to tears. The treaty with France was ready to be signed that day. He refused to put his name to it until he received assurance of protection for the persecuted Piedrnontese ; and immediately wrote, not only to the duke of Savoy himself, but to Louis XIV., to Cardinal Mazarin, the kings of Sweden and Denmark, the States-General, the Swiss cantons, and even to Ragotzki, prince of Transylvania, pleading for their interposition. Had his remonstrances proved unsuccessful, he had fully prepared to exact compliance at the point of the sword. A Protector not of the British realm ; only, but of the Protestantism of Europe, this " usurper " might claim, with out fiction the title " Defender of the Faith." Meantime the supremacy of England on the seas was upheld by Blake, whose guns thundered along the shores of the Mediterranean, exacting justice and submission from every hostile power. The duke of Tuscany, the Pope, tie doys of Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, eaih in succession, were forced to make reparation for injuries to English commerce and liberty. The Mediterranean was cleared of pirates, and the con fidence of peaceful merchants was restored. " By such means as these," said Cromwell, " we shall make the name of Englishmen as great as that of Roman was in Rome s most palmy days." After a lapse of nearly two years, Cromwell, still clinging to the wish of restoring the ancient constitution, now made another experiment of governing with a Parliament. It met on 17th September 1656. About a hundred of the inveterate republicans were excluded, and the House, now tolerably in harmony with the Protector s views, proceeded to a settlement of the nation. The major-generals were abolished early in spring ; the form of a new constitution, with two Houses of Parliament, and one governing person, with the title of " King," was proposed ; and during three months the subject was discussed amidst the intense expectation, of the whole people. That Cromwell was willing and even desirous to add this element of stability to his government there can be no doubt ; but seeing that the dangers that threatened to accompany the assumption of the title were likely to overbalance its advantages, he finally declined it. The remaining points of the constitution were agreed on, and on 26th June 1657 he was again, with additional solemnity and increased power, invested with the Protectorate. The new Parliament assembled on 20th January 1658. The Commons refused to acknowledge the Protector s House of Peers, and on 4th February he dissolved them, concluding his last speech with the solemn 1 It was said that Mazarin " feared Oliver more than the devil," and changed colour at the mention of his name. words " God be judge between me and you ! " The whole weight of government again rested on his shoulders, and with unabated enorgy he went on with his work, crushing the designs of domestic enemies, and maintaining abroad the full prestige of his power. His struggles were now drawing to an end. " He being compelled," saya Maidston, 2 " to wrestle with the difficulties of his place, so well as he could, without parliamentary assistance, in ifc met with so great a burthen as (I doubt not to say) it drank up his spirits, of which his natural constitution yielded a vast stock, and brought him to his grave ; his interment being the seed-time of his glory and England s calamity." On the 6th August his favourite daughter, Elizabeth, died after a lingering illness, during which the Protector had watched unremittingly by her side. His health, already declining, now visibly broke down. On Friday, the 3d of September 1658, the anniversary of his Fortunate Day, the spirit of Cromwell was released from i(s earthly toils, Nature herself seeming to prophesy, in the voice of the tempest that had swept over England, that a great power was passing away. " It has often been affirmed," says Lord Macaulay, " but apparently with little reason, that Oli"er died at a time fortunate for his renown, and that, if his life had been prolonged, it would probably have closed amidst disgraces and disasters. It is certain that he was to the last honoured by his soldiers, obeyed by the whole population of the British Islands, and dreaded by all foreign powers, that he was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England with funeral pomp, such as London had never before seen, and that he was succeeded by his son Richard as quietly as any king had ever been succeeded by any prince of Wales." 3 Historians, till within a comparatively recent period, have been nearly unanimous in their judgment on the character of Cromwell. That he was a man of extraordinary abilities was a necessary and universal admission, but served for the most part only " to point the moral " as an aggravation of his crimes. The only question concerning so terrible a prodigy seemed to be, how far a selfish and unscrupulous ambition may have been modified in him by a blind fanaticism, how far in deceiving others he may gradually have fallen into deception of himself. That his history should have been so interpreted admits of easy explanation. The recoil of sentiment that followed the death of Cromwell, and with him of Puritanism as a visible power, was great in proportion to the intensity of tho previous strain ; and a man who attempted to realize Christianity as a practical element in the government of nations, and addressed armies and parliaments in the language of the Bible, was not likely to be looked upon with sympathy in the age of Bolingbroke and Hume. Had Cromwell been less of a Christian and more of a Pagan, historians might have accorded to him some of that leniency with which they have spoken of the vices of a Cscsar or a Peter the Great. But the same office which cowardly hands had done for his bones, servility, ignorance, and prejudice did for his memory ; and during most part of two centuries, the name
- Letter to Winthrop, governor of Connecticut (Thurloe, i. 763).
From the same source we take this description of the Protector s personal appearance and character. " His body was well-built, com pact, and strong, his stature under six feet (I believe about two inches), his head so shaped as you might see in it a storehouse and shop both of a vast treasury of natural parts. His temper exceedingly fiery, as I have known, but the flame of it kept down for the most part or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had. He T. as naturally com passionate towards objects in distress, even to an effeminate measure ; though God had made him a heart wherein was left little room for any fear, but what was due to Himself, of which there was a largo proportion, yet did he exceed in tenderness towards sufferers. A larger soul I think hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than hia vus."
3 History of England, vol. i. p. 139.