The Works of Thomas Carlyle/Volume 6/Letter 1
Charles 1
PART FIRST
TO THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR
1636-1642
St. Ives, a small Town of perhaps fifteen hundred souls, stands on the left or Northeastern bank of the River Ouse, in flat grassy country, and is still noted as a Cattle-market in those parts. Its chief historical fame is likely to rest on the following one remaining Letter of Cromwell’s, written there on the 11th of January 1635-6.
The little Town, of somewhat dingy aspect, and very quiescent except on market-days, runs from Northwest to Southeast, parallel to the shore of the Ouse, a short furlong in length: it probably, in Cromwell’s time, consisted mainly of a row of houses fronting the River; the now opposite row, which has its back to the River, and still is shorter than the other, still defective at the upper end, was probably built since. In that case, the locality we hear of as the ‘Green’ of St. Ives would then be the space which is now covered mainly with cattle-pens for market-business, and forms the middle of the street. A narrow steep old Bridge, probably the same which Cromwell travelled, leads you over, westward, towards Godmanchester, where you again cross the Ouse, and get into Huntingdon. Eastward out of St. Ives, your route is towards Earith, Ely and the heart of the Fens.
At the upper or Northwestern extremity of the place stands the Church; Cromwell’s old fields being at the opposite extremity. The Church from its Churchyard looks down into the very River, which is fenced from it by a brick wall. The Ouse flows here, you cannot without study tell in which direction, fringed with gross reedy herbage and bushes; and is of the blackness of Acheron, streaked with foul metallic glitterings and plays of colour. For a short space downwards here, the banks of it are fully visible; the western row of houses being somewhat the shorter, as already hinted: instead of houses here, you have a rough wooden balustrade, and the black Acheron of an Ouse River used as a washing-place or watering-place for cattle. The old Church, suitable for such a population, stands yet as it did in Cromwell’s time, except perhaps the steeple and pews; the flagstones in the interior are worn deep with the pacing of many generations. The steeple is visible from several miles distance; a sharp high spire, piercing far up from amid the willow-trees. The country hereabouts has all a clammy look, clayey and boggy; the produce of it, whether bushes and trees, or grass and crops, gives you the notion of something lazy, dropsical, gross.—This is St. Ives, a most ancient Cattle-market by the shores of the sable Ouse, on the edge of the Fen-country; where, among other things that happened, Oliver Cromwell passed five years of his existence as a Farmer and Grazier. Who the primitive Ives himself was, remains problematic; Camden says he was ‘Ivo a Persian’;—surely far out of his road here! From him however, Phantasm as he is (being indeed nothing,—except an ancient ‘stone-coffin,’ with bones, and tatters of ‘bright cloth’ in it, accidentally ploughed up in this spot, and acted on by opaque human wonder, miraculous ‘dreams,’ and the ‘Abbot of Ramsey’),[1] Church and Village indisputably took rise and name; about the Year 1000 or later;—and have stood ever since; being founded on Cattle-dealing and the firm Earth withal. Ives or Yves, the worthy Frenchman, Bishop of Chartres in the time of our Henry Beauclerk; neither he nor the other French Yves, Patron Saint of Attorneys, have anything to do with this locality; but miraculous ‘Ivo the Persian Bishop’ and that anonymous stone-coffin alone.—
Oliver, as we observed, has left hardly any memorial of himself at St. Ives. The ground he farmed is still partly capable of being specified, certain records or leases being still in existence. It lies at the lower or Southeast end of the Town; a stagnant flat tract of land, extending between the houses or rather kitchen-gardens of St. Ives in that quarter, and the banks of the River, which, very tortuous always, has made a new bend here. If well drained, this land looks as if it would produce abundant grass, but naturally it must be little other than a bog. Tall bushy ranges of willow-trees and the like, at present, divide it into fields; the River, not visible till you are close on it, bounding them all to the South. At the top of the fields next to the Town is an ancient massive Barn, still used as such; the people call it ‘Cromwell’s Barn’:—and nobody can prove that it was not his! It was evidently some ancient man’s or series of ancient men’s.
Quitting St. Ives Fen-ward or Eastward, the last house of all, which stands on your right hand among gardens, seemingly the best house in the place, and called Slepe Hall, is confidently pointed out as ‘Oliver’s House.’ It is indisputably Slepe-Hall House, and Oliver’s Farm was rented from the estate of Slepe Hall. It is at present used for a Boarding-school: the worthy inhabitants believe it to be Oliver’s; and even point out his ‘Chapel’ or secret Puritan Sermon-room in the lower story of the house: no Sermon-room, as you may well discern, but to appearance some sort of scullery or wash-house or bake-house. ‘It was here he used to preach,’ say they. Courtesy forbids you to answer, ‘Never!’ But in fact there is no likelihood that this was Oliver’s House at all: in its present state it does not seem to be a century old,[2] and originally, as is like, it must have served as residence to the Proprietors of Slepe-Hall estate, not to the Farmer of a part thereof. Tradition makes a sad blur of Oliver’s memory in his native country! We know, and shall know, only this, for certain here, That Oliver farmed part or whole of these SlepeHall Lands, over which the human feet can still walk with assurance; past which the River Ouse still slumberously rolls, towards Earith Bulwark and the Fen-country. Here of a certainty Oliver did walk and look about him habitually, during those five years from 1631 to 1636; a man studious of many temporal and many eternal things. His cattle grazed here, his ploughs tilled here, the heavenly skies and infernal abysses overarched and underarched him here.
In fact there is, as it were, nothing whatever that still decisively to every eye attests his existence at St. Ives, except the following old Letter, accidentally preserved among the Harley Manuscripts in the British Museum. Noble, writing in 1787, says the old branding-irons, ‘O. C.,’ for marking sheep, were still used by some Farmer there; but these also, many years ago, are gone. In the Parish-Records of St. Ives, Oliver appears twice among some other ten or twelve respectable ratepayers; appointing, in 1633 and 1634, for ‘St. Ives cum Slepa’ fit annual overseers for the ‘Highway and Green’:—one of the Oliver signatures is now cut out. Fifty years ago, a vague old Parish-clerk had heard from very vague old persons, that Mr. Cromwell had been seen attending divine service in the Church with ‘a piece of red flannel round his neck, being subject to inflammation.’[3] Certain letters ‘written in a very kind style from Oliver Lord Protector to persons in St. Ives,’ do not now exist; probably never did. Swords ‘bearing the initials of O. C.,’ swords sent down in the beginning of 1642, when War was now imminent, and weapons were yet scarce,—do any such still exist? Noble says they were numerous in 1787; but nobody is bound to believe him. Walker[4] testifies that the Vicar of St. Ives, Rev. Henry Downhall, was ejected with his curate in 1642; an act which Cromwell could have hindered, had he been willing to testify that they were fit clergymen. Alas, had he been able! He attended them in red flannel, but had not exceedingly rejoiced in them, it would seem.—There is, in short, nothing that renders Cromwell’s existence completely visible to us, even through the smallest chink, but this Letter alone, which, copied from the Museum Manuscripts, worthy Mr. Harris[5] has printed for all people. We slightly rectify the spelling, and reprint.
TO MY VERY LOVING FRIEND MR. STORIE, AT THE SIGN OF THE DOG IN THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON: DELIVER THESE.
Mr. Storie,—Amongst the catalogue of those good works which your fellow-citizens and our countrymen have done, this will not be reckoned for the least, That they have provided for the feeding of souls. Building of hospitals provides for men’s bodies; to build material temples is judged a work of piety; but they that procure spiritual food, they that build-up spiritual temples, they are the men truly charitable, truly pious. Such a work as this was your erecting the Lecture in our Country; in the which you placed Dr. Wells, a man of goodness and industry, and ability to do good every way; not short of any I know in England: and I am persuaded that, sithence his coming, the Lord hath by him wrought much good among us.
It only remains now that he who first moved you to this, put you forward in the continuance thereof: it was the Lord; and therefore to Him lift we up our hearts that He would perfect it. And surely, Mr. Storie, it were a piteous thing to see a Lecture fall, in the hands of so many able and godly men, as I am persuaded the founders of this are; in these times, wherein we see they are suppressed, with too much haste and violence, by the enemies of God his Truth. Far be it that so much guilt should stick to your hands, who live in a City so renowned for the clear shining light of the Gospel. You know, Mr. Storie, to withdraw the pay is to let fall the Lecture: for who goeth to warfare at his own cost? I beseech you therefore im the bowels of Jesus Christ, put it forward, and let the good man have his pay. The souls of God’s children will bless you for it; and so shall I; and ever rest, your loving Friend in the Lord,
Commend my hearty love to Mr. Busse, Mr. Beadly, and my other good friends. I would have written to Mr. Busse; but I was loath to trouble him with a long letter, and I feared I should not receive an answer from him: from you I expect one so soon as conveniently you may. Vale.[6]
Such is Oliver’s first extant Letter. The Royal Exchange has been twice burned since this piece of writing was left at the Sign of the Dog there. The Dog Tavern, Dog Landlord, frequenters of the Dog, and all their business and concernment there, and the hardest stone masonry they had, have vanished irrecoverable. Like a dream of the Night; like that transient Sign or Effigies of the Talbot Dog, plastered on wood with oi] pigments, which invited men to liquor and house-room in those days! The personages of Oliver’s Letter may well be unknown to us.
Of Mr. Story, strangely enough, we have found one other notice: he is amongst the Trustees, pious and wealthy citizens of London for most part, to whom the sale of Bishops’ Lands is, by act of Parliament, committed, with many instructions and conditions, on the 9th of October 1646.[7] ‘James Story’ is one of these; their chief is Alderman Fowke. From Oliver’s expression, ‘our Country,’ it may be inferred or guessed that Story was of Huntingdonshire: a man who had gone up to London and prospered in trade, and addicted himself to Puritanism;—much of him, it is like, will never be known! Of Busse and Beadly (unless Busse be a misprint for Bunse, Alderman Bunce, another of the above ‘Trustees’), there remains no vestige.
Concerning the ‘Lecture,’ however, the reader will recall what was said above, of Lecturers, and of Laud’s enmity to them; of the Feoffees who supported Lecturers, and of Laud’s final suppression and ruin of those Feoffees in 1633. Mr. Story’s name is not mentioned in the List of the specific Feoffees; but it need not be doubted he was a contributor to their fund, and probably a leading man among the subscribers. By the light of this Letter we may dimly gather that they still continued to subscribe, and to forward Lectureships where possible, though now in a less ostentatious manner.
It appears there was a Lecture at Huntingdon: but his Grace of Lambeth, patiently assiduous in hunting down such objects, had managed to get that suppressed in 1633,[8] or at least to get the King’s consent for suppressing it. This in 1633. So that ‘Mr. Wells’ could not, in 1636, as my imbecile friend supposes,[9] be ‘the Lecturer in Huntingdon,’ wherever else he might lecture. Besides Mr. Wells is not in danger of suppression by Laud, but by want of cash! Where Mr. Wells lectured, no mortal knows, or will ever know. Why not at St. Ives on the market-days? Or he might be a ‘Running Lecturer,’ not tied to one locality that is as likely a guess as any.
Whether the call of this Wells Lectureship and Oliver’s Letter got due return from Mr. Story we cannot now say; but judge that the Lectureship,—as Laud’s star was rapidly on the ascendant, and Mr. Story and the Feoffees had already lost 1,800l. by the work, and had a fine in the Starchamber still hanging over their heads,—did in fact come to the ground, and trouble no Archbishop or Market Cattle-dealer with God’s Gospel any more. Mr. Wells, like the others, vanishes from History, or nearly so. In the chaos of the King’s Pamphlets one seems to discern dimly that he sailed for New England, and that he returned in better times. Dimly once, in 1641 or 1642, you catch a momentary glimpse of a ‘Mr. Wells’ in such predicament, and hope it was this Wells,—preaching for a friend, ‘in the afternoon,’ in a Church in London.[10]
Reverend Mark Noble says, the above Letter is very curious, and a convincing proof how far gone Oliver was, at that time, in religious enthusiasm.[11] Yes, my reverend imbecile friend, he is clearly one of those singular Christian enthusiasts, who believe that they have a soul to be saved, even as you do, my reverend imbecile friend, that you have a stomach to be satisfied,—and who likewise, astonishing to say, actually take some trouble about that. Far gone indeed, my reverend imbecile friend!
This, then, is what we know of Oliver at St. Ives. He wrote the above Letter there. He had sold his Properties in Huntingdon for 1,800l.; with the whole or with part of which sum he stocked certain Grazing-Lands on the Estate of Slepe Hall, and farmed the same for a space of some five years. How he lived at St. Ives: how he saluted men on the streets; read Bibles; sold cattle; and walked, with heavy footfall and many thoughts, through the Market Green or old narrow lanes in St. Ives, by the shore of the black Ouse River,—shall be left to the reader’s imagination. There is in this man talent for farming; there are thoughts enough, thoughts bounded by the Ouse River, thoughts that go beyond Eternity,—and a great black sea of things that he has never yet been able to think.
I count the children he had at this time; and find them six: Four boys and two girls; the eldest a boy of fourteen, the youngest a girl of six; Robert, Oliver, Bridget, Richard, Henry, Elizabeth. Robert and Oliver, I take it, are gone to Felsted School, near Bourchier their Grandfather’s in Essex. Sir Thomas Bourchier the worshipful Knight, once of London, lives at Felsted; Sir William Masham, another of the same, lives at Otes hard by, as we shall see.
Cromwell at the time of writing this Letter was, as he himself might partly think probable, about to quit St. Ives. His mother’s brother Sir Thomas Steward, Knight, lay sick at Ely in those very days. Sir Thomas makes his will in this same month of January, leaving Oliver his principal heir; and on the 30th it was all over, and he lay in his last home: ‘Buried in the Cathedral of Ely, 30 January 1635-6.’
Worth noting, and curious to think of, since it is indisputable: On the very day while Oliver Cromwell was writing this Letter at St. Ives, two obscure individuals, ‘Peter Aldridge and Thomas Lane, Assessors of Shipmoney,’ over in Buckinghamshire, had assembled a Parish Meeting in the Church of Great Kimble, to assess and rate the Shipmoney of the said Parish: there, in the cold weather, at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, ‘11 January 1635,’ the Parish did attend, ‘John Hampden, Esquire,’ at the head of them, and by a Return still extant,[12] refused to pay the same or any portion thereof,—witness the above ‘Assessors,’ witness also two ‘Parish Constables’ whom we remit from such unexpected celebrity. John Hampden’s share for this Parish is thirty-one shillings and sixpence; for another Parish it is twenty shillings; on which latter sum, not on the former, John Hampden was tried.
- ↑ His Legend (De Beato Yvone, Episcopo Persâ), with due details, in Bollandus, Acta Sanctorum, Junii, tom. ii, (Venetiis, 1742), pp. 288-92.
- ↑ Noble, i. 102, 106
- ↑ See Noble: his confused gleanings and speculations concerning St. Ives are to be found, i. 105-6, and again, i. 258-61.
- ↑ Sufferings of the Clergy. See also Appendix, No. 1.
- ↑ Life of Cromwell: a blind farrago, published in 1761, ‘after the manner of Mr. Bayle,’—a very bad ‘manner,’ more especially when a Harris presides over it! Yet poor Harris’s Book, his three Books (on Cromwell, Charles and James I.) have worth: cartloads of Excerpts, carefully transcribed,—and edited, in the way known to us, ‘by shoving-up the shafts.’ The increasing interest of the subject brought even these to a second edition in 1814.
- ↑ Harris (London, 1814), p. 12, This Letter, for which Harris, in 1761, thanks ‘the Trustees of the British Museum,’ is not now discoverable in that Establishment; ‘a search of three hours through all the Catalogues, assisted by one of the Clerks,’ reports itself to me as fruitless.— — Does exist safe, nevertheless (Sloane Mss. no. 2035, f. 125, a venerable brown Autograph); and in the ‘new Catalogue’ will be better indicated. ‘Busse’ is by no means ‘Bunse,’ as some have conjectured. (Note to third Edition.)
- ↑ Scobell’s Acts and Ordinances (London, 1658), p. 99.
- ↑ Wharton’s Laud (London, 1695), p. 527.
- ↑ Noble, i. 259.
- ↑ Old Pamphlet: Title mislaid and forgotten.
- ↑ Noble, i. 259.
- ↑ Facsimile Engraving of it in Lord Nugent’s Memorials of Hampden (London, 1832), i, 231.