The Works of Thomas Carlyle/Volume 6/Letter 2

by Thomas Carlyle

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LETTER II

Oliver removed to Ely very soon after writing the foregoing Letter. There is a ‘receipt for 10l.’ signed by him, dated ‘Ely, 10 June 1636’;^[1] and other evidence that he was then resident there. He succeeded to his Uncle’s Farming of the Tithes; the Leases of these, and new Leases of some other small lands or fields granted him, are still in existence. He continued here till the time of the Long Parliament; and his Family still after that, till some unascertained date, seemingly about 1647,^[2] when it became apparent that the Long Parliament was not like to rise for a great while yet, and it was judged expedient that the whole household should remove to London. His Mother appears to have joined him in Ely; she quitted Huntingdon, returned to her native place, an aged grandmother,—was not, however, to end her days there.

As Sir Thomas Steward, Oliver’s Uncle, farmed the tithes of Ely, it is reasonable to believe that he, and Oliver after him, occupied the house set apart for the Tithe-Farmer there; as Mark Noble, out of dim Tradition, confidently testifies. This is ‘the house occupied by Mr. Page’;^[3] under which name, much better than under that of Cromwell, the inhabitants of Ely now know it. The House, though somewhat in a frail state, is still standing; close to St. Mary’s Churchyard; at the corner of the great Tithe-barn of Ely, or great Square of tithe-barns and offices,—which ‘is the biggest barn in England but one,’ say the Ely people. Of this House, for Oliver’s sake, some Painter will yet perhaps take a correct likeness:—it is needless to go to Stuntney out on the Soham road, as Oliver’s Painters usually do; Oliver never lived there, but only his Mother’s cousins! Two years ago this House in Ely stood empty; closed finally up, deserted by all the Pages, as ‘the Commutation of Tithes’ had rendered it superfluous: this year (1845), I find it is an Alehouse, with still some chance of standing. It is by no means a sumptuous mansion; but may have conveniently held a man of three or four hundred a year, with his family, in those simple times. Some quaint air of gentility still looks through its ragged dilapidation. It is of two stories, more properly of one and a half; has many windows, irregular chimneys and gables. Likely enough Oliver lived here; likely his Grandfather may have lived here, his Mother have been born here. She was now again resident here. The tomb of her first husband and child, Johannes Lynne and poor little Catharina Lynne, is in the Cathedral hard by. ‘Such are the changes which fleeting Time procureth.’—

 

The Second extant Letter of Cromwell’s is dated Ely, October 1638.^[4] It will be good to introduce, as briefly as possible, a few Historical Dates, to remind the reader what o’clock on the Great Horologe it is, while this small Letter is a-writing. Last year in London there had been a very strange spectacle; and in three weeks after, another in Edinburgh, of still more significance in English History.

On the 30th of June 1637, in Old Palaceyard, three men, gentlemen of education, of good quality, a Barrister, a Physician and a Parish Clergyman of London were set on three Pillories; stood openly, as the scum of malefactors, for certain hours there; and then had their ears cut off,—bare knives, hot brandingirons,—and their cheeks stamped ‘S. L.,’ Seditious Libeller; in the sight of a great crowd, ‘silent’ mainly, and looking ‘pale.’^[5] The men were our old friend William Prynne,—poor Prynne, who had got into new trouble, and here lost his ears a second and final time, having had them ‘sewed on again’ before: William Prynne, Barrister; Dr. John Bastwick; and the Rev. Henry Burton, Minister of Friday-street Church. Their sin was against Laud and his surplices at Allhallowtide, not against any other man or thing. Prynne, speaking to the people, defied all Lambeth, with Rome at the back of it, to argue with him, William Prynne alone, that these practices were according to the Law of England; ‘and if I fail to prove it,’ said Prynne, ‘let them hang my body at the door of that Prison there,’ the Gate-house Prison. ‘Whereat the people gave a great shout,’—somewhat of an ominous one, I think. Bastwick’s wife, on the scaffold, received his ears in her lap, and kissed him.^[6] Prynne’s ears the executioner ‘rather sawed than cut.’ ‘Cut me, tear me,’ cried Prynne; ‘I fear thee not; I fear the fire of Hell, not thee!’ The June sun had shone hot on their faces. Burton, who had discoursed eloquent religion all the while, said, when they carried him, near fainting, into a house in King-street, ‘It is too hot to last.‘

Too hot indeed. For at Edinburgh, on Sunday the 23d of July following, Archbishop Laud having now, with great effort and much manipulation, got his Scotch Liturgy and Scotch Pretended-Bishops ready,^[7] brought them fairly out to action,—and Jenny Geddes hurled her stool at their head. ‘Let us read the Collect of the day,’ said the Pretended-Bishop from amid his tippets;—‘De’il colic the wame of thee! answered Jenny, hurling her stool at his head. ‘Thou foul thief, wilt thou say mass at my lug?’^[8] I thought we had got done with the mass some time ago;—and here it is again! ‘A Pape, a Pape!’ cried others: ‘Stane him!’^[9]—In fact the service could not go on at all. This passed in St. Giles’s Kirk, Edinburgh, on Sunday 23d July 1637. Scotland had endured much in the bishop way for above thirty years bygone, and endeavoured to say nothing, bitterly feeling a great deal. But now, on small signal, the hour was come. All Edinburgh, all Scotland, and behind that all England and Ireland, rose into unappeasable commotion on the flight of this stool of Jenny’s; and his Grace of Canterbury, and King Charles himself, and many others had lost their heads before there could be peace again. The Scotch People had sworn their Covenant, not without ‘tears’; and were in these very days of October 1638, while Oliver is writing at Ely, busy with their whole might electing their General Assembly, to meet at Glasgow next month. I think the Tulchan Apparatus is likely to be somewhat sharply dealt with, the Cow having become awake to it! Great events are in the wind; out of Scotland vague news, of unappeasable commotion risen there.

In the end of that same year, too, there had risen all over England huge rumour concerning the Shipmoney Trial at London. On the 6th of November 1637, this important Process of Mr. Hampden’s began. Learned Mr. St. John, a dark tough man, of the toughness of leather, spake with irrefragable law-eloquence, law-logic, for three days running,

on Mr. Hampden’s side; and learned Mr. Holborn for three other days;—preserved yet by Rushworth in acres of typography, unreadable now to all mortals. For other learned gentlemen, tough as leather, spoke on the opposite side; and learned judges animadverted;—at endless length, amid the expectancy of men. With brief pauses, the Trial lasted for three weeks and three days. Mr. Hampden became the most famous man in England,^[10]—by accident partly. The sentence was not delivered till April 1638; and then it went against Mr. Hampden: judgment in Exchequer ran to this effect, ‘Consideratum est per eosdem Barones, quod predictus Johannes Hampden de iisdem viginti solidis oneretur,’ He must pay the Twenty shillings, ‘et inde satisfaciat.’^[11] No hope in Law-Courts, then; Petition of Right and Tallagio non concedendo have become an old song. If there be not hope in Jenny Geddes’s stool, and ‘De’il colic the wame of thee,’ we are in a bad way!—

During which great public Transactions, there had been in Cromwell’s own Fen-country a work of immense local celebrity going on: the actual Drainage of the Fens, so long talked about; the construction, namely, of the great Bedford Level, to carry the Ouse River direct into the sea; holding it forcibly aloft in strong embankments, for twenty straight miles or so; not leaving it to meander and stagnate, and in the wet season drown the country, as heretofore. This grand work began, Dryasdust in his bewildered manner knows not when; but it ‘went on rapidly,’ and had ended in 1637.^[12] Or rather had appeared, and strongly endeavoured, to end in 1637; but was not yet by any means settled and ended; the whole Fen-region clamouring that it could not, and should not, end so. In which wide clamour, against injustice done in high places, Oliver Cromwell, as is well known, though otherwise a most private quiet man, saw good to interfere; to give the universal inarticulate clamour a voice, and gain a remedy for it. He approved himself, as Sir Philip Warwick will testify,^[13] ‘a man that would set well at the mark,’ that took sure aim, and had a stroke of some weight in him. We cannot here afford room to disentangle that affair from the dark rubbish-abysses, old and new, in which it lies deep buried: suffice it to assure the reader that Oliver did by no means ‘oppose’ the Draining of the Fens, but was and had been, as his Father before him, highly favourable to it; that he opposed the King in Council wishing to do a public injustice in regard to the Draining of the Fens; and by a ‘great meeting at Huntingdon,’ and other good measures, contrived to put a stop to the same. At a time when, as Old Palaceyard might testify, that operation of going in the teeth of the royal will was somewhat more perilous than it would be now! This was in 1688, according to the good testimony of Warwick.^[14] Cromwell acquired by it a great popularity in the Fen-country, acquired the name or nickname ‘Lord of the Fens’; and what was much more valuable, had done the duty of a good citizen, whatever he might acquire by it. The disastrous public Events which soon followed put a stop to all farther operations in the Fens for a good many years.

 

These clamours of local grievance near at hand, these rumours of universal grievance from the distance,—they were part of the Day’s noises, they were sounding in Cromwell’s mind, along with many others now silent, while the following Letter went off towards ‘Sir William Masham’s House called Otes, in Essex,’ in the year 1638.—Of Otes and the Mashams in Essex, there must likewise, in spite of our strait limits, be a word said. The Mashams were distant Cousins of Oliver’s; this Sir William Masham, or Massam as he is often written, proved a conspicuous busy man in the Politics of his time; on the Puritan side;—rose into Oliver’s Council of State at last.^[15] The Mashams became Lords Masham in the next generations, and so continued for a while; one Lady Masham was a daughter of Philosopher Cudworth, and is still remembered as the friend of John Locke, whom she tended in his old days; who lies buried, as his monument still shows, at the Church of High Laver, in the neighbourhood of which Otes Mansion stood. High Laver, Essex, not far from Harlow Station on the Northeastern Railway. The Mashams are all extinct, and their Mansion is swept away as if it had not been. ‘Some forty years ago,’ says my kind informant, ‘a wealthy Maltster of Bishop’s Stortford became the proprietor by purchase; and pulled the Manorhouse down; leaving the outhouses as cottages to some poor people.’ The name Otes, the tomb of Locke, and this undestroyed and now indestructible fraction of Rag-paper alone preserve the memory of Mashamdom in this world. We modernise the spelling; let the reader, for it may be worth his while, endeavour to modernise the sentiment and subject-matter.

There is only this farther to be premised, That St. John, the celebrated Shipmoney Barrister, has married for his second wife a Cousin of Oliver Cromwell’s, a Daughter of Uncle Henry’s, whom we knew at Upwood long ago;^[16] which Cousin, and perhaps her learned husband reposing from his arduous law-duties along with her, is now on a Summer or Autumn visit at Otes, and has lately seen Oliver there.

TO MY BELOVED COUSIN MRS. ST JOHN, AT SIR WILLIAM MASHAM HIS HOUSE CALLED OTES, IN ESSEX* PRESENT THESE.

Ely, 18th October 1638.

Dear Cousin,—I thankfully acknowledge your love in your kind remembrance of me upon this opportunity. Alas, you do too highly prize my lines, and my company. I may be ashamed to own your expressions, considering how unprofitable I am, and the mean improvement of my talent.

Yet to honour my God by declaring what He hath done for my soul, in this I am confident, and I will be so. Truly, then, this I find: That He giveth springs in a dry barren wilderness where no water is. I live, you know where,—in Meshec, which they say signifies Prolonging; in Kedar, which signifies Blackness: yet the Lord forsaketh me not. Though He do prolong, yet He will I trust bring me to His tabernacle, to His resting-place. My soul is with the Congregation of the Firstborn, my body rests in hope; and if here I may honour my God either by doing or by suffering, I shall be most glad.

Truly no poor creature hath more cause to put himself Forth in the cause of his God than I. I have had plentiful wages beforehand; and I am sure I shall never earn the least mite. The Lord accept me in His Son, and give me to walk in the light,—and give us to walk in the light, as He is the light! He it is that enlighteneth our blackness, our darkness. I dare not say, He hideth His face from me. He giveth me to see light in His light. One beam in a dark place hath exceeding much refreshment in it:—blessed be His Name for shining upon so dark a heart as mine! You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh, I lived in and loved darkness, and hated light; I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true: I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me. O the riches of His mercy! Praise Him for me;—pray for me, that He who hath begun a good work would perfect it in the day of Christ.

Salute all my friends in that Family whereof you are yet a member. I am much bound unto them for their love. I bless the Lord for them; and that my Son, by their procurement, is so well. Let him have your prayers, your counsel; let me have them.

Salute your Husband and Sister from me:—He is not a man of his word! He promised to write about Mr. Wrath of Epping; but as yet I receive no letters:—put him in mind to do what with conveniency may be done for the poor Cousin I did solicit him about.

Once more farewell. The Lord be with you: so prayeth your truly loving Cousin,

OLIVER CROMWELL.^[17]

There are two or perhaps three sons of Cromwell’s at Felsted School by this time: a likely enough guess is, that he might have been taking Dick over to Felsted on that occasion when he came round by Otes, and gave such comfort by his speech to the pious Mashams, and to the young Cousin, now on a summer visit at Otes. What glimpses of long-gone summers; of long-gone human beings in fringed trouser-breeches, in starched ruff, in hood and fardingale;—alive they, within their antiquarian costumes, living men and women; instructive, very interesting to one another! Mrs. St. John came down to breakfast every morning in that summer visit of the year 1638, and Sir William said grave grace, and they spake polite devout things to one another; and they are vanished, they and their things and speeches,—all silent, like the echoes of the old nightingales that sang that season, like the blossoms of the old roses. O Death, O Time!—

For the soul’s furniture of these brave people is grown not less unintelligible, antiquarian, than their spanish boots and lappet caps. Reverend Mark Noble, my reverend imbecile friend, discovers in this Letter evidence that Oliver was once a very dissolute man; that Carrion Heath spake truth in that Flagellum Balderdash of his. O my reverend imbecile friend, hadst thou thyself never any moral life, but only a sensitive and digestive? Thy soul never longed towards the serene heights, all hidden from thee; and thirsted as the hart in dry places wherein no waters be? It was never a sorrow for thee that the eternal pole-star had gone out, veiled itself in dark clouds;—a sorrow only that this or the other noble Patron forgot thee when a living fell vacant? I have known Christians, Moslems, Methodists,—and, alas, also reverend irreverent Apes by the Dead Sea!

O modern reader, dark as this Letter may seem, I will advise thee to make an attempt towards understanding it. There is in it a ‘tradition of humanity’ worth all the rest. Indisputable certificate that man once had a soul; that man once walked with God,—his little Life a sacred island girdled with Eternities and Godhoods. Was it not a time for heroes? Heroes were then possible. I say, thou shalt understand that Letter; thou also, looking out into a too brutish world, wilt then exclaim with Oliver Cromwell,—with Hebrew David, as old Mr. Rouse of Truro, and the Presbyterian populations, still sing him in the Northern Kirks

Woe’s me that I in Meshec am
A sojourner so long,
Or that I in the tents do dwell
To Kedar that belong!

Yes, there is a tone in the soul of this Oliver that holds of the Perennial. With a noble sorrow, with a noble patience, he longs towards the mark of the prize of the high calling. He, I think, has chosen the better part. The world and its wild tumults,—if they will but let him alone! Yet he too will venture, will do and suffer for God’s cause, if the call come. What man with better reason? He hath had plentiful wages beforehand; snatched out of darkness into marvellous light: he will never earn the least mite. Annihilation of self; Selbsttödtung, as Novalis calls it; casting yourself at the footstool of God’s throne, ‘To live or to die for ever; as Thou wilt, not as I will.’ Brother, hadst thou never, in any form, such moments in thy history? ‘Thou knowest them not, even by credible rumour? Well, thy earthly path was peaceabler, I suppose. But the Highest was never in thee, the Highest will never come out of thee. Thou shalt at best abide by the stuff; as cherished housedog, guard the stuff,—perhaps with enormous gold-collars and provender: but the battle, and the hero-death, and victory’s fire-chariot carrying men to the Immortals, shall never be thine. I pity thee; brag not, or I shall have to despise thee.

1. Noble, i. 107.
2. See Appendix, No, 8, last Letter there. (Note to third Edition.)
3. Noble, i. 106.
4. In Appendix, No. 2, another Note of his. (Third Edition.)
5. State Trials (Cobbett’s, London, 1809), iii. 746.
6. Tower’s British Biography.
7. Rushworth, ii. 321, 343; iii. Appendix, 153-5; etc.
8. — — ‘No sooner was the Book opened by the Dean of Edinburgh, but a number of the meaner sort, with clapping of their hands and outcries, made a great uproar; and one of them, called Jane or Janot Gaddis (yet living at the writing of this relation), flung a little folding-stool, whereon she sat, at the Dean’s head, saying, ‘Out, thou false thief! dost thou say the mass at my lug?’ Which was followed with so great a noise,’ etc. These words are in the Continuation of Baker’s Chronicle, by Philips (Milton’s Nephew); fifth edition of Baker (London, 1670), p. 478. They are not in the fourth edition of Baker, 1665, which is the

   first that contains the Continuation; they follow as here in all the others. Thought to be the first grave mention of Jenny Geddes in Printed History; a heroine still familiar to Tradition everywhere in Scotland.

   In a foolish Pamphlet, printed in 1661, entitled Edinburgh’s Joy, etc.,—Joy for the Blessed Restoration and Annus Mirabilis,—there is mention made of ‘the immortal Jenet Geddis,’ whom the writer represents as rejoicing exceedingly in that miraculous event; she seems to be a well-known person, keeping ‘a cabbage-stall at the Tron Kirk,’ at that date. Burns, in his Highland Tour, named his mare Jenny Geddes. Helen of Troy, for practical importance in Human History, is but a small Heroine to Jenny:—but she has been luckier in the recording!—For these bibliographical notices I am indebted to the friendliness of Mr. David Laing, of the Signet Library, Edinburgh.

9. Rushworth, Kennet, Balfour.
10. Clarendon.
11. Rushworth, iii. Appendix, 159-216; ib. ii. 480.
12. Dugdale’s Hist. of Embankments; Cole’s, Wells’s, etc. etc. Hist. of the Fens.
13. Warwick’s Memoirs (London, 1701), p. 250.
14. Ibid. : poor Noble blunders as he is apt to do.
15. His Great-grandson’s wife was, withal, a famous woman; the Abigail Masham of Queen Anne,—most renowned of Waiting-women, or ‘Abigails,’ in English History! (Note of 1869.)
16. Antea, p. 22.
17. Thurloe’s State Papers (London, 1742), i. 1.