CHAPTER VIII.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

Roger brought back from Paris an account of the life led by the son of the late king and his companions, that might perhaps have enfeebled Aunt Dorothy's prayers for his restoration, could she have believed it, which, however (having her belief much under the control of her will), she doubtless never would, on any evidence we could have brought. Of the Davenants he said little. But he had seen them, and from his tone I judged that the intercourse had done more to cheer than to sadden him. Sir Walter's face, he thought, looked somewhat lined with care; but, as far as I could gather, he saw no change in Lettice. To him she was the same he had parted from seven years before, the same he had held in his heart all the seven years through.

"Was she looking older?" I asked.

"In one way, not an hour," he said; "in another seven years."

"Paler?"

He could not tell; "her colour always came and went like sunshine; like her smile."

"As loyal as ever?"

"To the late king, and to royalty; yes."

"Graver?"

"They spoke of grave things. He thought, with all the old changefulness in her countenance, the calm beneath seemed deeper."

"Then she must be fairer than ever?"

"He thought not. She was the same."

And to him that was evidently the utmost he desired. If she had in any way changed, it had only been as he had changed, keeping parallel with him; therefore from him evidently no more was to be learned. Yet something in his interview had evidently strengthened him, like a new dawn of hope. Sir Walter, no doubt, would not hear of alliance with an adherent of "the Usurper;" yet he accepted, with scarcely disguised triumph, the glory England had won under the Usurper. A little more experience of what the Court of the young king was like to be; a little more proof of what free England could be; a little more of the hallowing touch of time, on the new Power's new glories; perhaps the Title belonging to the Power, once boldly claimed, recognized by the nation; and in the end for the sake of the old England the new dynasty might be recognized.

So Roger hoped; and to him, therefore, the debates in 1657, on the Protector's assuming the title of king, had a twofold interest.

The year 1656 closed, and the year 1657 began, stormily.

On the 27th of December my husband came to the house looking dispirited, and, catching up Maidie in his arms, he said to me,--

"I have a mind to sell all we have, and seek our fortunes in the wilderness, among the Indians."

Then he told me the scene he had just witnessed, Annis Nye and Job Forster standing by whilst he narrated how the poor fanatic, James Naylor, had stood in the pillory in front of the Exchange, weakened by the terrible scourging four days before from Whitehall to the Exchange, while his tongue was bored with a hot iron by command of the Parliament "for blasphemy."

"Twenty years have rolled away," he said; "countless precious lives have been sacrificed, a dynasty displaced, the king and the archbishop executed, the Star Chamber destroyed; and here stands the pillory again in the open day, with fierce fire in the hearts of those in power, to carry out a sentence cruel as any of Archbishop Laud's, to the uttermost."

"But the people?" I asked.

"As pitiful as in the days when Prynne, Bastwick, and Barton suffered in Palace Yard! Scarce an insulting word or gesture. While the cruel iron was at work, the crowd stood bareheaded, and Mr. Rich, the brave merchant, who had waited at the doors of the Parliament House imploring the members for mercy from eight till eleven this morning, held the sufferer's hand all the while, and afterwards licked his wounds."

"But they say the poor wretch was indeed guilty of blasphemy," I said. "His crime was at least very different from Mr. Prynne's."

"It was indeed mad blasphemy," he replied; "the madness of spiritual vanity veiling itself under some mystical notion that the homage was paid to Christ in him. The poor wretch suffered half-a-dozen deluded men and women to lead his horse into Bristol, scattering branches and garments before him, and crying hosannas."

Job, who was near, could not let the occasion pass.

"Take warning, Mistress Annis," he said, in a low voice aside to her; "this is what your Quaker inspiration leads to."

"I have need of warnings, Job Forster," she replied, "and so hast thou. This is what your tyranny over men's consciences leads to. This is what ambition has led thy Oliver Cromwell to; once a man of whom George Fox had hope, and over whose soul the Friends have been very tender."

"The Lord Protector protests against this cruelty," said my husband.

"His work is not to protest, Leonard Antony," said she, "but to prevent. But he has been faithfully warned. George Fox hath told him what will come upon him if he heeds not; and George's warnings are not to be scorned. Before now, more than one who has despised them has come to a fearful end."

For once my husband was roused. "Annis Nye," he said, "you and your Friends are as unmerciful in heart as the rest. The Voices that denounce God's lightnings for their own private wrongs are moved by the same spirit as the hands that heat the irons for the pillory. Verily ye know not what spirit ye are of. Denunciatory prophecies are the persecution of the persecuted." And he turned sadly away.

Aunt Gretel wept many tears when she heard the narrative of James Naylor's sufferings, afterwards completed by a second scourging at Bristol, the scene of his mad and blasphemous entry. But she reached the source of consolation sooner than any of us. Looking, according to her wont, beyond all the middle distance which is the battle-field of the great national questions of churches and governments, and seeing in the whole primarily the Good Shepherd seeking the sheep and leading the wandering flock, she said, wiping her eyes,--

"Poor foolish creature! if Annis speaks right, he was once a humble and devout Christian. He had fallen deep and wandered far. Perhaps he will have to thank the good Lord that he has found the ways of the wilderness so cruel. Perhaps even now, if we could see, he is beginning to creep back, torn, maimed, and bleeding as he is, body and soul, to the feet of the Good Shepherd. Thou wilt not forget him, Leonard, when thou visitest the prison."

My husband did not, and afterwards brought us word how, during his imprisonment in Bridewell, James Naylor came to true repentance, and published his confession of his fall, when "darkness came upon him, and he ran against that Rock to be broken which had so long borne him, and whereof he had so largely drunk, and of which at last he drank in measure again, praising God's mercy in delivering him, and greatly fearing ever to offend again, whereby the innocent truth, or the people of God might suffer."

After that the poor restored penitent's career was brief, but blameless.

Aunt Gretel watched it to the close with a tender pity. He survived his fall and punishment four years, dying at the age of forty-four. And Aunt Gretel was wont to keep the record of what he spoke shortly before his death among her treasury of trophies of the triumph of God's good over men's evil. The words were these:--

"There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, and hopes to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty. If it is betrayed, it bears it; for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind."

And two hours afterwards, the brief journey, so full of bewilderment and pain and repentance, was over. To a heart burdened with the dishonour of that blasphemous entry into Bristol, the pillory in Palace Yard and in the City must, I think, have been a dishonour not bitter to bear, but rather one for which he would bless God who suffered him to suffer it. Perhaps those, his judges, who had in their memories the dishonour of issuing and enforcing such a sentence, had also in their turn their sentences to suffer, for which they also afterwards learned to bless God.

For the wheel went quickly round in those days. Laud in the Star Chamber, Prynne in the pillory; the Presbyterians and Prynne in the Parliament, the archbishop on the scaffold; Naylor in the pillory; his judges in the prisons of the Restoration.

A quarter of a century accomplished it all. But no one saw the wheel turning. Each revolution, as it came, seemed the last. For there was a pause between each. And in the pause the people who were uppermost looked round on the earth, and shouted, "Now the Kingdom is come, and the world will stand still;" while the people who were underneath looked to heaven, and sighed, "Will the years of peace never come? O Lord, how long?"

But I think it a noble trait in the Quakers that, accused as they were on all sides of fanaticism, and strong as the temptation must have been to disown any connection with such a fallen man as Naylor, nevertheless, although they faithfully rebuked him in secret, they generously stood by him in his degradation, and did not leave him until they had brought him to repentance, and tenderly welcomed him back among them.

With James Naylor's torturing sentence, the year 1656 closed. The year 1657 began with stratagems and plots.

Towards morning, on the night of the 8th of January, the drowsy voice of the bellman, speaking benedicites on our home, and calling us to "hang out our lights," had just died away at the corner of the silent street, and his bell was faintly echoing in the distance, mingling with the dream it had broken, when a call at the door aroused us.

It was Job Forster.

His first words as my husband opened the house-door to him (I listening on the stairs), were an alarming assurance that we need not be alarmed. In a minute I was wrapped in my mantle and beside them.

Job's face was haggard and his eyes ringed with dark circles of anxiety.

"All danger is over!" he said. "The assassin has been taken after a hard struggle. He is in the Tower. Miles Sindercombe, an old comrade of mine," added Job with a groan, "one of those that were sentenced with me at Burford!" It was another attempt on the Lord Protector's life. Some time since, the assassin (having received £1,500 from the baser spirits among the Royalists for the purpose) had hired a room at Hammersmith, on the road by which Oliver rode every Saturday to his Sabbath rest at Hampton Court, watching for an opportunity to murder him. But in vain. And at length this night the attempt was to have been made at Whitehall. At midnight the sentinel had smelt fire, a match had been found close to a basket of wildfire, the locks of the doors were discovered to have been picked, and all prepared for a conflagration, in the confusion of which Oliver was to have been assassinated. But it had been found out in time, the danger was averted, and the Protector had refused to have the city alarmed, or the train-bands roused. "But, oh!" groaned Job, "Mistress Olive and Master Antony, think of what a pit I stood on the brink! 'Mutiny the first step;' and the last, murder. No doubt the poor deluded wretch went down easy enough after that first step. And I had taken the first!"

He was very gentle and subdued, and said nothing at breakfast. Not even Annis Nye's gentle "hope that the Protector would take warning at last, and see that the poor Friends' prophecies had some meaning in them," could rouse him. He only shook his head and said,--

"Poor maid! She has got to take her lesson by Burford steeple yet."

The excitement in the city that day was great. It was one of the few occasions which I remember in which a strong and general display of personal feeling was called out towards the Protector.

The Parliament ordered a Thanksgiving Day, and numbers went to offer congratulations. One sentence of Oliver's reply Roger repeated to us,--

"If we will have peace without a worm in it," said the Protector, "lay we foundations in justice and righteousness."

Roger kept full of hope through all. This danger of death to its head, as with so many refractory families, had at last (he thought) roused the nation to gratitude.

The offer of the title of King followed. Roger believed the Protector would accept it. King was a name dear to the English people, who "love not change," and "love settlement and familiar words." King was a name known to the laws, "honoured, and bounded" by the laws. Any other name, said the Protector in comparison, was too "large and boundless." The power he possessed--and on that he suffered no debate; the end of all the fighting, he said, had been settlement. A Parliament voting itself to sit constantly, and debating everything, from the nation's faith to the forms of governing--"debating three months the meaning of the word encumbrance"--"committees elected to fetch men from the extremest part of the nation to attend committees set to determine all things," Oliver considered would never lead to "settlement." Between this nation and general "topsy-turvying" he had submitted to take his stand; and there, while he lived, whether honoured or reviled, he would stand, whether as King, Protector, or Constable, to keep the peace of the parish; "not so much hoping to do much good as to prevent imminent evil;" to "keep the godly of all judgments from running on each other;" to keep some men from the kind of liberty which consisted in "liberty to pinch other men's consciences;" to keep other men from such liberty as resulted in license or "orderly confusion;" to keep all Protestants from ruin; to keep England from becoming "an Aceldama." This the Protector regarded as the thing God had given him to do; and by whatever weapons, by whatever title, he was determined to do it; and then was ready, as he wrote to his son-in-law, to "flee away and be at rest," being meantime lifted above men's judgment by the consciousness of "some little sincerity in him." Roger said that the new work could have been better done under the old names; so much necessary change in substance being made more acceptable to the common people by the least possible change in forms (the principle, according to Aunt Gretel, on which Luther had carried out his Reformation). And so, he believed, thought the Protector. But his son-in-law, Fleetwood, and so many of the best men around him, either considered the very name of king doomed with the dynasty which had abused it, or valued the forms of a republic as of the essence of liberty--that his Highness yielded what to him would indeed have been nothing more than a "feather in a man's cap;" an adornment at no time sacred or precious to Puritan men for its own sake.

Thus the debate on the kingly title ended in the solemn inauguration of Oliver as Lord Protector.

It was on the 25th of June, in Westminster Hall, that the last great ceremonial of the Commonwealth, except the Great Funerals, took place. The old stone of the Scotch kingdom, the purple robe, the canopy of state, the sword, the Bible, the sceptre given by the Speaker of the Commons to be "the stay and staff of the nation," into the hands that, as we believed, had been their stay and staff so long; the foreign ambassadors of all nations around him, they at least, recognizing him openly as England's ruler and deliverer; and, outside, the multitudes shouting "God save the Lord Protector,"--the hearts of all men still aglow with the news of the great victory of Blake over the Spaniards in the harbour of Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe.

There was no lack of enthusiasm; nor, indeed, of colour and music. Some picture our Puritan times as draped in funereal black. The Puritan ministers had a very different impression of them as they bemoaned the glory and bravery of their people's attire; and Mistress Hutchinson's colonel, in "his scarlet cloak, richly laced," was not solitary in his splendour.

Music graced all the Protector's festivals. It was, I think, to him, as to Martin Luther, the festive thing in the world. And the music of lofty and significant words was not wanting in the Speaker's address, or in the solemn prayer which followed.

Nevertheless there were not a few who, with our friend Dr. Rich, could not forget what the last great scene in Westminster Hall had been, when a king discrowned sat at the bar of his subjects, alone, yet defying their authority. And among such it was murmured ominously that there was one thing even the "murderers of his sacred majesty" did not dare to take; the crown which had fallen from the "anointed" head.

So the grand ceremonial ended, and all men went again to their work; the Protector to protect England and the Protestant Church against the world; the Parliament (as he hoped) to reform laws, "manners," and especially the Court of Chancery,--"the delays in suits," the excessiveness in fees, the costliness of suits,--to see that "men were not hanged for six and eight-pence, and acquitted for murder."

And we to our humble work, each in his place. My husband went to his patients and his prisons. Roger, strong in trust in the Protector, and in hope for England, joined the troops which were fighting the Spaniards with those of Marshal Turenne in Flanders. My father, on the verge of seventy, had withdrawn altogether from politics. Having as firm a faith in the triumph of truth as Roger, he yet deemed the cycles wider in which she moved. Love with him was the reverse of blind. It was natural to him to see with painful clearness the faults of the cause dearest to him. Much as in many ways he honoured the Protector, he nevertheless deemed his government a beneficent despotism undermining the foundations of law. "Had the Protector been immortal," he said, "a better government than his could scarce be. But Laws and Constitutions are remedies against the mortality of all men, as well as against the fallibility of the best men. Therefore I cannot rejoice in a rule which interposes but the heart and brain of one man between the nation and anarchy."

So he turned therefore from the whirlwind of political affairs to the calm rule of law in stars and seas; and the wonderful circulation of life through all the animated world, as, according to Mr. Harvey's discovery, through the veins of those fearfully made bodies of ours. Through him we heard much of the proceedings of the Society of Art, and of such patriotic efforts as the rescue of Raphael's cartoons, by the Protector's desire. In promoting such works he hoped to serve England (he said) as an old man best might.

For if there were an idolatry among us in those Commonwealth days, it was that of England.

Patriotism with the nobler Commonwealth men was a passion and a religion; what love is to a lover, and loyalty to such a Royalist as rose.

It was England for whose sake Cromwell was content to be called a hypocrite and a despot, and to be a "constable," and a man worn to old age at fifty with care and toil.

It was the love of England which kindled the calm heart of the glorious blind poet, who then dwelt among men, to a fanaticism of passionate invective against all who assailed her.

To him she was "a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; as an eagle renewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam, purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means."

"Thou, therefore," he wrote, "that sittest in light and glory inapproachable, Parent of angels and men. Next, Thee I implore, omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume; ineffable, and everlasting Love! And Thou the third subsistence of Divine Infinitude, illumining Spirit, the joy and solace of created things! one tri-personal Godhead!

"O Thou that, after the impetuous rage of five blustering inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were quite breathless, of Thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of covenant with us, and having first well-nigh freed us from antichristian thraldom, didst build up this Thy Britannic Empire to a glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about her; stay us in this felicity; let not the obstinacy of our half-obedience and will-worship bring forth the viper of sedition, .... that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings how for us the Northern Ocean, even to the frozen Thule, was scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, and the very maw of hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction, ere she could vent it in that terrible and damned blast. Hitherto Thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from the unjust and tyrannous claim of Thy foes; now unite us entirely, and appropriate us to Thyself; tie us everlastingly in willing homage to the prerogatives of Thy eternal throne.

"Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may, perhaps, be heard offering in high strains, in new and lofty measure, to sing and celebrate Thy divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her whole vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation, to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day, when Thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King, shall open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and, distributing national honours to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming Thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and earth, where they, undoubtedly, that, by their labours, counsels, and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion and their country, shall receive, above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and thrones, unto their glorious titles, and, in super-eminence of beatific vision, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in over-measure for ever!"

This was what ambition meant, and titles and crowns, to the nobler Puritan men in the days of. the great Commonwealth. This was what England meant, and patriotism. This was what made it so bitter to them to see sedition undermining all this glorious possibility; to see feeble meddling hands untwisting the cordage with which the good old ship had to be worked through battle and storm; so unutterably bitter to see good men blindly (as they believed) helping bad men to undo that glorious past, and render that glorious future, if not impossible for the world for ever, impossible for ages longer; and for England perhaps impossible for evermore.

"For if it should fall out otherwise--if you should basely relinquish the path of virtue, if you do anything unworthy of yourselves--posterity will sit in judgment on your conduct. They will see that the foundations were well laid; that the beginning--nay, it was more than a beginning--was glorious; but with deep emotions of concern will they regret that they were wanting who might have completed the structure. They will see that there was a rich harvest of glory, and an opportunity for the greatest achievements; but that men only were wanting for the execution, while they were not wanting who could rightly counsel, exhort, enforce, and bind an unfading wreath of praise around the brows of the illustrious actors in so glorious a scene."

So he wrote whose hand could best have bound the unfading wreath of praise, whose vision, as he dwelt under the hallowing "shadow of God's wing," became prophetic.

But, meantime, Roger and the brave "labouring men" around him, who reached not to those clear prophetic heights, toiled cheerily on, not seeing the chasm which yawned between them and the glorious goal they deemed so near.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"_January_, 1658.--For a twelvemonth now my father and I have been alone. The usurper demanded the banishment of our king from France, and Mazarin and the French Court submitted to the indignity; an indignity, it seems to us, to all courts and all kings.

"Walter accompanied the king to Bruges, and has scarce written to us since. My father and I seldom mention him to each other, but I know he is seldom absent from the thoughts of either of us. The only things which seem to interest my father now are the movements of our exiled Court, which he watches with a feverish solicitude, and the triumphs of the English arms by land and sea, of which he eagerly learns every detail with a mixture cf patriotic pride and loyal indignation which it moves me much to see.

"Last May, for instance, he told me how the French King Louis had come back from reviewing the united French and English troops at Boulogne, and how the French soldiers and courtiers could not say enough of the soldierly bearing of those English horsemen and pikemen.

"Roger saw Walter before he left France, and my father. But I did not see him again.

"It was from Walter I learned of their interview.

"'An act of sisterly loving-kindness, Lettice,' said he, 'to turn a Puritan battery on your brother!'

"His tone was light, but not bitter, and he went on in a softened voice.

"'He has a princely temper, Lettice, and bore from me what I would not bear from the king. But all the time he made me feel I lowered myself and not him by my words. 'Tis a thousand pities, Lettice, those gentlemen keep us out of house and home. I might have been worth something at old Netherby with Roger Drayton for a neighbor. But what is a fellow to do who has no choice but to amuse himself or kill himself? And to throw oneself against Oliver and his England is nothing less than suicide. Oliver is responsible, at all events, for the mischiefs idleness has wrought among loyal men. Do you know, Lettice,' he continued, affectionately, after a pause, 'who manages the old estates for us, and sends us their rents so regularly?'

"'I guessed,' I said.

"'I had been told,' he replied, 'and I asked Roger, and he could not deny it. He and Mr. Drayton manage the estate as if they were our hired bailiffs. Roger himself paid the fine to the Parliament. But he made me promise never to let my father know.'

"I did not answer him. My heart was too full.

"'Lettice,' he exclaimed, 'you are a brave maiden, and a good sister to me. Forgive me if ever I said anything ungenerous to you. I would not care to own for a sister the woman whom Roger Drayton loved, if she could forget him for another. He is the kind of good man it would be worth while to be like. If it were not too late--altogether too late for me,' he added, despondingly.

"'You know it is never too late,' I said. 'Oh, Walter, that is just what you might have been! So my mother thought.'

"'You cannot say might be, Lettice,' he replied; 'not even with Roger Drayton always by my side.'

"'No one can be like Roger,' I said, 'who can only be like him with some one always by his side.'

"'No,' he replied, bitterly; 'Roger is a man to be leant on, not to lean.'

"'He is a man to be leant on,' I said, 'because he does lean. On One always by his side, Walter; the only One who can be always with any of us, the only One we can depend on always, and not grow weak, but strong in depending.'

"He said no more, but sat in silence some time, which seemed to me more like what I longed for in him than anything I had seen. And in the evening he took leave of me with the old kind way he had after our mother died. And for some weeks he was much with us.

"But soon after, the king was desired to quit France, and Walter would accompany him. It would be base, he said, to desert his master when these perfidious Courts and all the world abandoned him. My father could but faintly remonstrate. I ventured to ask if he was strong enough to go into that temptation. But he answered, gaily,--

"'We shall have work to do, Lettice. There is promise of fighting. The Spaniard is to help us, and we him; and together we will bear you back to Netherby in triumph, proclaim amnesties and tolerations without bounds, and bring back the golden age.'

"But there has been no fighting; and since he left we have scarce once heard from him. And we know too well what that means, in a company where nothing good or great is really believed in; neither in God, nor man, nor woman.

"_February_.--M. la Mothe is dead. And Madame, when she has arranged his affairs, has determined to retire to a convent, there to pray for his soul and to accomplish her own salvation.

"She is somewhat distracted what Order to join. The ladies of Port Royal seem to her the holiest people in the world. But, at the same time, the condemnation pronounced by the Pope on this book of Jansenius, which they regard as so excellent, perplexes her.

"Two years ago the world of Paris was set in a blaze by the 'Lettres Provinciales' of M. Blaise Pascal, in reply to the Jesuits; and by the attack on Jansenius and Port Royal. These letters were said to combine the eloquence and wit of the most finished man of the world with the devotion of a saint.

"Since then the war has waxed fiercer and fiercer between the Jansenists and the Jesuits. To a Protestant the controversy seems strange. Both parties seem to agree that the Pope can pronounce authoritively as to doctrine. But the offence of the Jansenists appears to be that they deny his power to create facts.

"But whatever the hinge of the controversy is (and in most controversies how insignificant the hinge is on which all nominally turns), the combatants seem to me to be divided by very real distinctions. I judge chiefly from their weapons. The weapons of the Jesuits seem to be assertions, anathemas, and prisons; those of Port Royal eloquent words, and a most devout and blameless life.

"Truth seems as sacred to them in its minutest expression as the noblest of the Puritans. They cannot lie. They can be banished, imprisoned; they can die, if such is the will of God, who loves them, and of those who hate them. But they cannot solemnly declare before Him, they believe a thing true which they believe to be false. 'Where is the Christian,' Jacqueline Pascal wrote, 'who would not abhor himself, if it were possible for him to have been present in Pilate's council; and if, when the question of condemning our Saviour to death arose, he had been content with an ambiguous way of pronouncing his opinion so that he might appear to agree with those who condemned his Master, though his words, in their literal meaning, and according to his own conscience, tended to an acquittal? M. de St. Cyran says the least truth of religion ought to be as faithfully defended as Christ Himself. The feebleness of our influence does not lessen our guilt if we use that influence against the truth. Truth is the only real liberator, and she makes none free but those that strike off her own fetters, who bear witness to her with a fidelity that entitles them to be acknowledged as the true children of God the true. Poverty, dispersion, imprisonment, death, these seem to me nothing compared with the anguish of my whole future life, if I should be wretched enough to make a league with death.'

"Noble Catholic Puritan woman!

"Nevertheless Jacqueline Pascal's regulations for the little orphan girls whom they charitably train at Port Royal freeze my heart even to read. The poor little ones are to abstain from all kissing of caressing each other. Even in their jealously limited hour of recreation, they are to play, each alone, without noise!

"And Thou has been on earth, O Christ, tender and gracious, folding the little ones in Thine arms, and these holy sisters of Port Royal love Thee, and read the gospel of Thy birth and death, and think this is what pleases Thee!

"The world was made by Thee, and the world knew Thee not. Alas, the Church which was made and redeemed by Thee, does she also know Thee so little!

"What a surprise, what a rapture of surprise, when these Thy servants who, seeing Thee so dimly, love Thee so much, wake up and see Thee as Thou art, as (if they could but see it) Thou art _now_!

"_June_ 1658.--Dunkirk has been taken from the Spaniards (chiefly they say by English troops), and has been given over to an English garrison. At last (my father writes), the blot of the loss of Calais is wiped out of the escutcheon of our country. All through those last months he had been watching the movements of the French and English forces with jealous interest. 'That crafty Italian,' he said, '(Mazarin) would overreach the usurper yet. The French Court would use the help of England as long as they needed it, and as long as they could pay with fair and flattering words. And when the time came to pay in fortunes and solid territory, they would politely bow Cromwell and his pikemen out of the country.'

"But when we heard that the 'Protector' had insisted on some of the fruits of the war being made over to England, and that the united armies were on the Flemish coast preparing for an attack on Dunkirk, my father's faith in the courage of our countrymen entirely got the better of his indignation against their politics; and he found several unanswerable reasons for being present at the seat of war.

"_June_.--Barbe came to me to-day in tears. Sad news had come again from her kindred in the Piedmont Valleys. Protestant surgeons forbidden to live there; trade prohibited; public worship suppressed; a new fortress, from which insolent troops sally to plunder and maltreat the people; commands to sell lands; dim rumours of a second massacre.

"'And Monseigneur Cromwell,' she said, 'so busy with his wars and sieges, that there can be little hope he will have leisure to remember those poor forsaken ones! What hope is there? For beside the English, these sufferers have no friend or protector in the world.'

"_July_ 3_rd_.--My father has returned.

"'It was worth while to travel round the world,' he said, 'truly, to hear the shout of the English pikemen before the fight. Marshal Turenne could not say enough of their soldierly bearing. He asked what that shout meant, and he was told, "They ever rejoice thus when they behold the enemy." And to see the Spanish veterans driven back before them from post after post, on the sandy dunes by the sea, was a sight to make an old man young. For the old country is young, Lettice, as young as when she stood up alone against old Spain and her Armada! I would the Duke of York had not been on the Spaniard's side. He seemed as out of place as Condé. I scarce know the cause,' he added gloomily, 'which saves a man from being a traitor in fighting against his country.'

"'Then Walter was not there?' I asked.

"His brow darkened.

"'Would to heaven he had been there, on any side!' he answered fiercely. 'Better fight for any cause than fight or work for none, but lead a sluggard's life, a Court-jester's, a Fool's, with the recreant idlers around the king.'

"He was silent for some minutes, going to the window and watching the melancholy dropping of the water from the urn of his old enemy, the moss-green nymph.

"Then he turned and said hastily,--

"'Drayton has found his service better rewarded than mine. Not a gentleman in England or France but might be proud of such a son as his. Firm as a rock, and as calm, who could guess the dash and fire that are in him, unless they saw him head a charge, as I did? 'Tis a labyrinth of a world, Lettice,' he added, 'and sometimes a man is tempted to throw down the clue in despair, and let the Fates take him and his where they will. Old Will Shakspeare saw to the bottom of it all a hundred years ago, "an unsubstantial pageant, the baseless fabric of a vision." Shakspeare and the Bible! There is nothing else worth reading or thinking of.'

"Then Roger was there; and has come out of the battle unscathed! Otherwise my father would have told me.

"But I know not whether they met or no.

"_July_ 4.--I told my father of Barbe's sad tidings of the Vaudois.

"'That will all be set right, you may feel sure,' he replied, grimly. 'There was talk enough about it in the midst of all the fighting. There is nothing that this base and cringing court will not do to court the alliance of that Traitor. I laugh when I hear these French courtiers talk of their ancient nobility, and the glory of their Royal House. Our kings and princes, cousins by blood of their own, may creep about as beggars and outcasts in any poor trading town that is not afraid to take them. But when "my lord Fauconbridge" comes as "ambassador" from this brewer of Huntingdon, Louis, the glorious monarch, descendant of a line of glorious monarchs (up to Nimrod, for what I know), talks to him bareheaded; and Mazarin, the Cardinal, conducts the rebel and heretic to his door with more than royal honours. I am sick of the whole hollow pageant, kings, statesmen, churchmen, all.'

"My father's indignation had led him far from Barbe and the Vaudois.

"'But I may tell Barbe the poor mountaineers will be saved?' I asked.

"'Yes, yes!' he said impatiently. 'There was a Latin letter about the oppression of these people, written, they say, by this Mr. John Milton, whom foreigners seem to think another Cicero or Virgil, the "wisest of Englishmen," and what not; why I know not, except that he writes good Latin, and they cannot read English, so that of course they cannot know anything about the wisdom of Englishmen. And the king, was all attention, and the fox of a Cardinal all sympathy with those poor plucked geese, of whose fate he was (of course) in entire ignorance. And the Duke of Savoy is to have an exhortation; and the massacre is to be forbidden.'

"But Barbe when I told her was altogether overcome. She burst into tears, and clasping her hands, exclaimed,--

"'To our dying day we will pray for the great heart that in the midst of wars by sea or land could remember those few poor persecuted brothers in the far-off mountains, and would not rest until they were rescued. To our dying day we will pray for him and for the great English nation. Mademoiselle will pardon, if I wound her loyal feelings,' she added, remembering what the name of Cromwell was to the Cavaliers, and kneeling for a moment and kissing my hand in apology; 'English politics are so difficult for us to understand. To you this Monseigneur may be such as you cannot approve, but to us poor Protestants, he is a Protector, Deliverer, Brother. Can we err in praying for him?'

"'You can scarcely err in praying for him, or for any one, Barbe,' I said. 'God will not give wrong because we ask wrong. If one of your little brothers, being thirsty, asked you for a drink from a cup of poison, you would smile and put it aside, and give him the cup of water he wants instead.'

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

The taking of Dunkirk in June, 1658, and the relief ensured to the threatened Christians in the Valleys, was a brilliant moment in that stormy time.

All England triumphed. The dishonour of the loss of Calais was undone. The Protestant Commonwealth had avenged the disgrace which sank so deep into the heart of the poor dying Popish Queen.

Once more the Lord Protector had shown that the Protestant Church was not a heap of disjointed fragments, but a living body, which felt with a pang of actual pain an injury inflicted on its feeblest member. A living body to feel, and a living power to avenge.

England was no more an island (except in as far as her seas and ships were her impassable trench and impregnable walls against the world), but as in the old days before the Reformation, one of the great commonwealth of nations, nay, rather the queenly protector of the great commonwealth of Protestant nations.

Nevertheless this sense of unity and strength seemed but the passing consciousness of a waking moment. The rest of the months seemed too much like a restless feverish dream. At least so they appear to me as I look back. How far the great calamity of that autumn has to do with darkening the whole year in my memory into a valley of the shadow of death, it is hard to say.

The clouds gathered and gathered again, thick and dark throughout the year, over the Commonwealth and over the Protector's household.

The prophets of doom saw sorrows enough break on Oliver's head to satisfy them that their predictions were just.

On February the 4th, his last Parliament was dissolved, with words which seem to me noble and mournful as any with which a great man ever uttered his grief that his people would not understand him, and that he had to tread his way alone.

A fortnight before he had opened it with words of stern warning, yet of hope:--"I look upon this to be the great duty of my place," he had said, "as being set on a watch-tower to see what may be for the good of these nations, and what may be for the preventing of evil." Then warning them of the dangers which environed England and the Protestant nations, he said,--"You have accounted yourselves happy in being environed with a great ditch from all the world beside. Truly you will not be able to keep your ditch, nor your shipping, unless you fight to defend yourselves. If you shall think this is a time of sleep and ease and rest,--we may discourse of all things at pleasure, there is no danger,--I have this comfort to Godward; I have told you of it."

And now the warnings were fulfilled, the hope had vanished, and with stern voice he said;--

"I had very comfortable expectations that God would make the meeting of this Parliament a blessing. That which brought me into the capacity I now stand in was the petition and advice given me by you. There is not a man living can say I sought it; not a man nor woman treading upon English ground.

"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 my woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep." "I thought I had been doing that which was my duty, and thought it would have satisfied you. But if everything must be _too high or too low_, you are not to be satisfied." (Theologies puffed up too high on airy heights, above plain "virtue and honesty, justice, piety," and all the sober work of men; disorders plunging too low.) "Yet you have not only disjointed yourselves, but the whole nation; which is in likelihood of running into more confusion in these fifteen or sixteen days that you have sate, than it hath been from the rising of the session to this day; that some men may rule all! And they are endeavouring to engage the army to carry that thing!

"These things tend to nothing but the playing of the King of Scots' game (if I may so call him), and I think myself bound before God to do what I can to prevent it.

"The King of Scots hath an army ready to be shipped for England; and while this is doing, there are endeavours from some who are not far from this place, to stir up the people of this town into a tumulting. Some of you have been listing persons by commission of Charles Stuart. And if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time an end should be put to your sitting. And I do dissolve this Parliament. And let God be Judge between you and me."

The Protector, at least, was not afraid to appeal to the highest tribunal. Royalists, Quakers, Fifth-Monarchy men, good men of various kinds, threatened him with the judgment of that bar as a terror. He invoked it as a refuge.

So his last Parliament went its way, leaving him to bear the whole burden alone for the rest of the journey. It was not long. Six months, and he should stand at the tribunal to which he had appealed. He had appealed to the Highest; to the Highest he was to go.

The blows of death fell thick on those he loved;--on the few who steadfastly trusted and honoured him. In the August before, Blake had died, the sea hero, coming home from his victories. He had died off Plymouth, in sight of shore.

Could we have seen it, the Protector also was in sight of shore; the shore he longed for, and did not fail to reach.

In February one of his young daughters was widowed, the Lady Frances, bereaved in the first year of their marriage of her husband, young Mr. Rich, a widow at seventeen.

In April died the good Earl of Warwick, one of the noblemen who had honoured Oliver from the first; Mr. Rich's grandfather.

In July and early August the shadow drew closer. The Lady Claypole--his dearest daughter Betty--lay sorely smitten at Hampton Court.

The tumults around the palace and the kingdom, for the time, must have seemed faint, far-off echoes to the father's heart, compared with the sufferings and fears of the sick-chamber, where his daughter lay dying.

Yet these were not few.

General Lambert, his old friend and comrade, plotting to throw him out of one of the windows of Whitehall, under pretence of presenting a petition; "knowing," Roger said, "how open the brave heart which no treachery could make suspicious, was to cries for redress of wrong."

Colonel Hutchinson, Independent and Republican, also his old friend and comrade, while warning him of this plot, piercing his heart, belike, deeper than the assassin's knife by deeming the "affection" and trusting words and tears with which the Protector thanked him (almost beseeching the return of the old friendship) mere "arts" and "fair courtship."

The Presbyterians coldly holding off from him, or persistently conspiring with the Cavaliers.

Lord Ormond in London in disguise, organizing a Royalist insurrection.

The tract, "Killing no Murder," warning him that "the muster-roll" of those who thought it doing God service to kill him, was "longer than he could count," and some of them "among his own friends."

Fifth-Monarchy men raising the standard of the "Lion of the tribe of Judah," against what they called his tyranny.

George Fox and the Quakers, in awful letters of denunciation, "laying on him the weight" of all the persecution of the Friends throughout England, inflicted under the authority of his name, although, as far as I know, never by his order.

Aunt Dorothy wrote that deliverance must be at hand, for she understood that a "synagogue of Portuguese Jews had been suffered to pollute the land by celebrating publicly their anti-Christian rites in London."

Annis Nye said little. "But Thomas Oldham, Margaret Fell, George Fox, and Edward Burrough have warned Oliver," she observed, "that if he listen to lies against the innocent, and fail to release the Friends from prison, God will suddenly smite him, and that without remedy."

"Not so easy, Mistress Annis," replied Job, "for a mortal man, protector or king, to know what are lies, and who are the innocent, nor to set all the wrongs right in a day. Not so easy it seems, even for the Almighty, who has been ruling all these ages. I thought once it could be done all in a day. But I had to learn otherwise, and so wilt thou. Seems to me one half of the godly grumble at the Protector because they think he wants to be almighty, and the other because they want him to be all-seeing and all-present."

Meanwhile, the ambassadors of all rations thronged to pay homage to the man who made all men honour England, whether she honoured him or not. Through those summer months after the victory and capture of Dunkirk, the streets were brave with coaches of ambassadors and princes, from France, Denmark, Austria, and the ends of the earth.

The strong hand was still on the helm, the clear strong eyes were still on the waves and stars, keeping watch for England, whether she acknowledged it or not.

No man saw the hand relax its grasp, or the eyes waver from their purpose, for all the noise and clamour, or the aiming at his life. He saw all, and calmly put aside the danger when too near; but never turned from his steadfast watch, steadfastly piloting the good ship on.

Until at last, for a brief season, the brave heart gave way. His dearest child was dying; and for fourteen days the Lord Protector could attend to nothing save the dying moans and tears of that bed of anguish. For her death was slow, and approached through terrible pain, so that her anguish was more than her father could bear to see.

George Fox wrote to her some words of warm and tender sympathy:

"Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and be stayed in the principle of God in thee, that it may raise thy mind up to God, and stay it upon God, and find Him to be a God at hand. The humble, God will teach His way. The same light which lets you see sin and transgression will let you see the covenant of God which blots out your sin and transgression, which gives victory and dominion over it. For looking down at sin and corruption and desolation, ye are swallowed up in it; but looking at the light which discovers them, you will see over them: that ye may feel the power of an endless life, the power of God which is immortal; which brings the immortal soul up to the immortal God, in whom it doth rejoice. So, in the name and power of the Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty strengthen thee."

Good words, though no new truth to the daughter of him who had written, years before, to General Fleetwood, his daughter Bridget's husband: "Faith, as an act, yields not grace; but only as it leads to Him who is our perfect rest and peace." But when they were read to the poor suffering lady, she said they "stayed her mind." She had need of all the stay that could be given. And her father was not one to keep one word of comfort from her fainting heart because he could have spoken it better, or because it dropped from lips which had denounced him.

On the 5th of August the long watch by the bed of anguish in the mournful palace-chamber was over. The weary body and spirit were at rest. The Lady Elizabeth lay dead.

The Protector roused himself once more to take up the burden of the State, which while she suffered, he had been, for the first time, unable to bear. Attempts at assassination, insurrections, had not interrupted his work a day. But for fourteen days even England was forgotten, as he watched the slow death agonies of his child.

Now that she was dead, he arose and girded himself once more for his warfare.

Another fourteen days, and he could put his armour off and lie down for the long rest!

The sources of his strength were not altogether hidden from us. We heard that a few days after his daughter's death he called on one to read him from the Bible the words: "_Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me._"

"This Scripture did once save my life," he said, "when my eldest son died, which went as a dagger to my heart, indeed it did."

"It's true, Paul," he went on, after a pause, "you have learned this, and attained to this measure of grace, but what shall _I_ do? Ah, poor creature, it's a hard lesson for me to take out. I find it so." Then, looking on, he read aloud: "_I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me_;" and his heart seemed comforted, for he said: "He that was Paul's Christ is my Christ too."

He was standing near the end of the arduous journey, though neither he nor any knew it; and from the height he looked back over the many battle-fields of his life; from this last sorrow to that first, to the grave of his first-born, and all the promise buried with him in the quiet old church at Felsted.

A day or two after George Fox met him, riding at the head of his life-guard. Oliver stopped and listened, and spoke to him about the sufferings of Friends. Always so ready to listen to men he believed good and true, denounce him as they might! And he bade George Fox come to his house. But on the morrow when George went to Hampton Court to wait on him, the physicians deemed the Protector too ill to see him, and the Quaker went away and never saw him more. He thought that he had felt a "waft of death" go forth against the Protector when he met him at the head of his guard. It would be long before George Fox found again one in king's palaces, lord of England, and dread of Europe, who would "catch him by the hand," as Oliver did, regardless of discourtesies and denunciations, and say with tears in those searching and commanding eyes, "Come again to my house. If thou and I were but an hour of the day together, we should be nearer one to the other. I wish no more harm to thee than I do to my own soul."

Perhaps as George went away from the door so freely opened to him, the memory of these welcomes and farewells came back to him. And he may have thought that in prophesying death to the Protector, he and his Friends had uttered rather a promise than a threat. But I know not.

On Friday, the 20th of August, uneasy rumours began to spread of his Highness's sickness. On the following Tuesday, the 24th, the symptoms were worse. It was tertian ague, and the doctors had him removed to Whitehall for drier air.

The anxiety in the city grew speechless; brief questions to any who knew of his state; brief unsatisfying answers. And then prayers, fervent, frequent, constant, in churches, in cathedrals, in palaces, in homes; from Owen and Goodwin in a a room at Whitehall adjoining that in which the Protector lay. Prayers so fervent, that those who poured them forth from hearts made eloquent by hope and fear, mistook this inward glow for a responsive divine fire, and assured others that their offerings were accepted, that their petitions would be granted, and the precious life be spared to England yet.

But through all those days Roger, who had returned from France, spoke scarce a word, save in answer to our questions about his Highness's health, when he came from the palace. He looked pale as death himself, and well-nigh as rigid. The longings in his heart for Oliver's life were so fervent that to himself his own prayers and those of other men seemed in comparison as if struck with a death chill. "I cannot pray, Olive," he said to me once. "When I look up to heaven I seem to see nothing but a great silent, stately Company, making a path between them for him, straight to the Throne, and waiting to see him pass."

Once when coming from a place where many had met in prayer, broken by tears and sobs, I said to Roger: "Surely God only suffers this to show England what he is. The people begin to understand him now! They will never forget!"

"They begin to understand now," he said. "Wayward children do begin to understand many things by a father's death-bed."

The word fell from his lips like a tolling bell. I knew well he could not have uttered it if he had felt any hope.

Annis Nye was quieter than even her wont, and very gentle, during those days. Once having heard how his Highness' "spirit was stayed," she said a thing which drew my heart to her very closely.

"May be the words of the Friends are being fulfilled otherwise than we looked. May be the angel is smiting, not Oliver, but only the fetters, and the prison doors to set him free."

Roger brought us word from time to time of sacred words from the sick-chamber.

"The Covenants were two--Two put into One before the foundation of the world."

"It is holy and true--it is holy and true--it is holy and true! Who made it holy and true? The Mediator of the Covenant."

"The Covenant is but one. Faith in the Covenant is my support. And if I believe not, He abides faithful."

Solemn, slow, broken utterances, not to man, but to God.

And then to his wife and children weeping by his bedside--

"Love not the world. I say unto you it is not good that you should love this world."

It was becoming "_this_" world, no longer "the" world to him; but one of two worlds. For a little while longer _this_ world to him, soon to be "_that_ world" still surging in tumult below, where he had fought the good fight which is now over for ever.

"Children, live like Christians; I leave you the Covenant to feed upon."

Then (belike passing through a chaos of darkness and doubt, such as seems to edge round and usher in every fresh creation of light), "three times with great weight and vehemency of spirit"--

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

And afterwards (the light beyond the darkness being reached)--

"All the promises of God are in _Him_, yea and in Him, Amen, to the glory of God by us--by us--in Jesus Christ."

"The Lord hath filled me with as much assurance of His favour and His love as my soul can hold."

"I think I am the poorest wretch that lives; but I love God, or rather, am beloved of God."

"I am a conqueror, and more than a conqueror through Christ that strengtheneth me."

So through the weary days and nights he passed, nearer and nearer to the end, the tumult in men's hearts growing deeper, when on the Monday the 30th of August, the fearful storm of wind which none who heard can ever forget raged over the land, as if it were over the sea; beating back carriages on the roads, as if they had been boats on the rivers; raging, wailing, rending, destroying, as if the angels who held the "four winds of the earth" had relaxed their hold, and set the wild creatures all free together.

But to us who loved Oliver and the Commonwealth, that tempest seemed but the simple and natural accompaniment to the tumult in our souls, a response to the storms in men's hearts; simply a fitting dirge to the life that went out with it.

And meantime, through the storm, his Highness was praying thus:--

"Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched sinner, I am in covenant with Thee through grace. And I may, I will, come to Thee for Thy people. Thou has made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee some service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. Lord, however Thou do dispose of me, continue to go on and do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on Thy instruments to depend more upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample on the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too. And pardon the folly of this short prayer. Even for Jesus Christ's sake. And give us a good night if it be Thy pleasure. Amen."

He knew it, then, and _he had felt it_; it had pierced his heart, that those he deemed good men should mistrust him, and be glad that he should die. _That_ arrow had gone home, yet with the barb in his heart it could not make him think evil of those that launched it, nor leave them out of his prayers.

The last night came. It was the 2nd of September, the eve of his day of victory, the day of his "crowning mercy," a Thanksgiving Day in England since the battle of Worcester. The voice was low now, and the words not always to be understood.

"Surely God is good. He is--He will not--"

And often again and again, "with cheerfulness and fervour in the midst of his pains,"--

"God is good."

This was the key-note to which "all along" his other tones kept recurring--

"_Truly God is good--indeed He is._"

"I could be willing to live to be further serviceable to God and His people. But my work is done. Yet God will be with His people."

Through the night much restlessness, yet much inward rest. Broken words of holy consolation and peace, "self annihilating" words, words of kingly care for England, and God's cause there; these among the very last.

Some drink being offered to him, with an entreaty to try to sleep, he answered--

"It is not my design to drink or sleep; but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone."

And on the morrow he had fallen asleep, and was gone.

Amongst us who were left behind, the Thanksgiving Day was turned into weeping. But his long day of thanksgiving had begun. The long night of his faithful watching of the wars and storms for England was over; the clear eye, the steady hand, were gone from the helm. The day of victory, and rest, and coronation, had dawned for him at last.

For, as his chaplain Mr. John Howe, said:

"The greatest enemy we have in the world cannot do us the despite to keep us from dying."