CHAPTER XV.
THE LAST TWO YEARS OF THE PROTECTORATE.--1656-1658.
Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud Not of war only, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough’d; And on the neck of crownèd fortune proud Hast reared God’s trophies, and his work pursued, While Darwin[223] stream, with blood of Scots imbrued, And Dunbar’s field, resounds thy praises loud, And Worcester’s laureate wreath. Yet much remains To conquer still; peace hath her victories No less renowned than war; new foes arise, Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains: Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw. MILTON.
During the year and a half that Cromwell ruled arbitrarily, his government took root, for whatever its faults, it at least assured to the country the blessings of order and peace. Royalists and Presbyterians either sullenly acquiesced in the change of dynasty, or at least deferred their hopes of restoring Charles Stuart, till after the death of the present protector. As soon as the need of arbitrary government was past, Cromwell wished his use of it to pass too. “When matters of necessity come,” he had said to his Parliament, “then without guilt extraordinary remedies may be applied, but if necessity be pretended there is so much the more sin.” He determined to meet a Parliament that should restore the government to a nearer approach to its old form, and confer upon himself the title of king. To secure this result he would have to stretch his prerogative once more to oust the Republican opposition, but after this the legitimate career he longed for might be open to him. The Instrument of Government, which had been drawn up merely by a council of officers, an unconstitutional authority, wanted a legal sanction, and in place of lasting settlement, only opened to the view of the nation a dreary vista of military rulers, elected by the will of the army. The title of protector was strange and unacceptable to the people generally, nor did it conciliate the Republicans, who called a protector
‘A stately thing, That confesseth itself but the ape of a king.’[224]
%CROMWELL’S SECOND PARLIAMENT.%
Timid and time-serving supporters of Cromwell’s government remembered that by a statute of Henry VII., all persons adhering to the king _de facto_ were pronounced guiltless of treason. The protector, therefore, by receiving from a Parliament the title of king, might hope to calm the fears of many of his friends, to gratify the monarchical prejudices of the people, and even to establish a constitutional monarchy in England under kings of his own house. To ensure meeting an assembly favourable to his interests, he did not hesitate to resort to an arbitrary stretch of power. The Instrument of Government authorized the protector and council to make a scrutiny of the returns of elections, and examine whether persons returned were qualified to sit. This clause was intended as a precaution against the admission of any that had borne arms against the Parliament since 1641, and all members of Cromwell’s first Parliament had accordingly received tickets from the council, certifying that they were duly returned. Parliament met on the 17th of December; without any legal ground of exclusion, a hundred members, Republicans or other opponents of the government, were for the time refused tickets by the council. When they complained to the Parliament, Cromwell’s friends carried a vote by 125 to 29, that they must apply to the council for redress. The residue did not employ themselves very profitably at first. For the first three months of its sitting, the Parliament was almost solely engaged in debating upon the punishment due to James Naylor, the man who had ridden into Bristol, and was worshipped by his followers as divine. According to statute law, this fanatic could only have been imprisoned for six months, and in case of a second offence, banished from the dominions of the Commonwealth. But the Commons, imitating the refinements of the Star Chamber, sentenced him to be six times whipped, put twice in the pillory, have his tongue bored, his forehead branded, and then to be kept in solitary confinement on short rations. This was dealing hard measure to one at the worst half fool, half knave, and gave all liberally or mercifully minded men cause to regret the time when the House of Commons did not resolve itself into a court of justice and inflict arbitrary punishment at pleasure. The protector sent a letter to the House, desiring to be informed of the grounds of its proceedings. ♦Petition and Advice.♦ The question raised long debates, which resulted in the drawing up of a new instrument of government, called the Petition and Advice. Cromwell was to bear the title of king and to appoint his successor to the throne. New Parliaments were to be summoned once every three years, and were to be composed as formerly of two Houses. The Upper House was to consist of not more than 70 or less than 40 persons, who were to be named by the king. Members of council and officers of State were to be approved by Parliament. The chief magistrate was presumably allowed a negative voice on bills, as no clause was introduced to deprive him of a power hitherto always exercised by English monarchs. The command of the Army and Navy was to rest with the chief magistrate, with consent of Parliament. Thus this new instrument restored the ancient monarchy with some of those checks which the Long Parliament had sought to impose upon Charles I. The protector, who intended to govern in accordance with the articles of the Petition and Advice, encouraged his friends in the Parliament, to abolish both the office of major-general and the income tax of ten per cent. upon Royalists. The major-generals, however, to whom arbitrary government was not so distasteful as to their chief, took offence at their removal from office, and displayed their ill-will and jealousy by opposing the Petition and Advice in the Commons’ House, and especially the first clause, which conferred on the chief magistrate the title of king. Their motives may have been selfish; they may have disliked to see their fellow-soldier raised so far above themselves, when before any might have entertained a hope of succeeding Oliver in the office of Lord Protector. But the ground they publicly put forward was their attachment to the Republican ideal. Their feeling was shared by the army, and a deputation of a hundred officers waited upon the general, to pray him not to accept the title of king. The protector replied in words to the following effect: ‘that the title king, a feather in a hat, is as little valuable to him as to them. But the fact is, they and he have not succeeded in settling the nation hitherto, by the schemes they clamoured for. That the nation is tired of major-generalcies, of uncertain arbitrary ways. That the original instrument of government does need mending in some points. That a House of Lords, or other check upon the arbitrary tendencies of a single House of Parliament, may be of real use; see what they, by their own mere vote and will, I having no power to check them, have done with James Naylor: may it not be any one’s case, some other day?’[225] The officers agreed to withdraw their opposition to the Petition and Advice with the exception of the first clause. But in the House, councillors, lawyers, and other civilians, outnumbered the army men, and the insertion of the title was carried by 123 against 62 votes (29th March). Cromwell, however, dared not accept a crown at the risk of offending the army. After six weeks’ delay, during which he vainly sought to overcome the prejudices of officers and soldiers, he informed the Parliament, that though he approved of all the other articles of the new instrument, he could not undertake the government with the title of king. Accordingly it was agreed that while retaining the title of protector, he should exercise the powers vested in the chief magistrate by the Petition and Advice; and thus virtually become King of England in all but name (25th May).
%SYNDERCOMB’S PLOT.%
Though the union now existing between Cromwell and his Parliament was a great discouragement to insurrection, still Royalist exiles, and fanatical Levellers, continued to conspire against the government. Their hopes were cheered by a promise of aid from a new quarter. As soon as the protector’s foreign policy was declared, and there was no doubt that he would unite with France against Spain, the Spaniards promised to assist Charles Stuart with a body of 6000 men, as soon as any English port declared in his favour (April). An invasion had been planned for the preceding winter (1656-7). But the Royalists and Presbyterians refused to rise, before Charles had actually landed in the country; the Spaniards were found readier at promises than at performance, while Royalist exiles and Levellers, in spite of their common desire to overthrow the government, were suspicious of one another’s final intentions. Thus this grand political combination resulted merely in another attempt at assassination. Syndercomb, an old quarter-master, was supplied with £1600 from Spain, with which he engaged the services first of another old soldier, and then of one of Cromwell’s life-guardsmen. These agreed to fire Whitehall, and kill his highness in the tumult that would follow. One evening after a public service, there was left upon the floor of the chapel at Whitehall, a basket, filled with combustible matter, to which were attached two pieces of lighted match, intended to serve as a train, which should fire it about midnight. The sentinel, however, smelling fire, discovered basket and train, and the guardsman confessed the whole plot (March, 1657). Syndercomb, who was tried by jury and convicted of treason, poisoned himself in prison to escape the execution of his sentence. ♦‘Killing no Murder.’♦ On this the Leveller, Sexby, wrote a pamphlet entitled ‘Killing no Murder,’ which compared Syndercomb to Brutus, and justified all attempts to ‘cut off’ the protector (May). The Royalist exiles approved of the treatise. “It is only,” wrote Hyde, “to show the lawfulness and conveniency that he be presently killed.”[226]
%FOREIGN POLICY.%
There was, indeed, no hope for the Royalists except in Cromwell’s death. His government was now believed at home and abroad to be securely established for his life. His authority had been bestowed upon him by a Parliament in place of a council of officers. Though he still bore the title of Lord Protector, he possessed regal power, and was addressed in the same language and style as those employed to sovereign princes. He had parted on good terms with his Parliament, which, before its prorogation on the 26th of June, had granted him supplies of money, besides the confirmation of the ordinances he had made in council. Royalists dared not rise. His worst enemies could only shame their own cause by making vain attempts at assassination. Nor were his triumphs confined to his home government; abroad, as well, his policy had been crowned with success, and he had already taught foreigners to court the friendship and dread the enmity of England. “Your general,” said Christina, Queen of Sweden, to the English ambassador, “hath done the greatest things of any man in the world. I have as great a respect and honour for him as for any man alive, and I pray let him know as much from me.” Though Cromwell was not regarded by most princes with as much favour as he was by the daughter of the great Gustavus, they held the same opinion of his abilities, and dreaded the consequences of his ambition. Even before the expulsion of the Long Parliament, Louis XIV. was frightened by a report that the General of the English Commonwealth intended to land in France at the head of his renowned troops, and assist the French nobles, then in arms against his government. But Cromwell, unlike Napoleon, had no aspirations for the glory a mere soldier might earn by leading on his countrymen to foreign conquest. In him was nothing of the adventurer. The object of his ambition at home, was to establish in England a free government in Church and State; abroad, his single aim was to support the cause of freedom in Europe, by a coalition of progressive and Protestant States against the reactionary kingdoms of Spain and Austria. He would have scorned to rule a people reduced to a slavish condition; he would have scorned to conquer without some deeper motive than the mere aggrandizement of himself or his country. Somewhat haughtily he bade the French ambassador set his master’s fears at rest. “Looking at his hair, which is white, General Cromwell said, that if he were ten years younger, there was not a king in Europe whom he could not make to tremble; and that, as he had a better motive than the late King of Sweden, he believed himself still capable of doing more for the good of nations than the other ever did for his own ambition.”[227]
%FRANCE AND SPAIN.%
Europe, no doubt, at this time opened a field for new combinations. The Thirty Years’ War had been long brought to a close by the Treaty of Westphalia (Sept., 1648). During the latter years of the war the religious object of the struggle had dropped out of sight, and the belligerents were chiefly influenced by political motives. The Swedes fought to gain a footing on the southern shores of the Baltic. The French from the first had assisted Protestants against the emperor, in order to extend their own territories at the expense of Germany. The Catholic princes of the German empire had become more eager to maintain their political rights against the increased power of the emperor, than to eradicate Protestant heresy. By the conditions of the Treaty of Westphalia, Protestant princes of the empire were to be put on an equality with Catholic; Protestant subjects of Catholic princes, Catholic subjects of Protestant princes, were to enjoy any religious immunities they possessed before the war began; part of the Lower Palatinate was to be restored to Charles Louis, the brother of Rupert and Maurice, and eldest son of the unfortunate Elector Palatine, who married the sister of Charles I. Though the German war was over, the struggle between France and Spain was continued with great animosity, each country striving to crush her rival, and become the first power in Europe. Both Louis XIV. and Philip IV. of Spain were bidding for the protector’s support. Spain offered the possession of Calais, when taken from France; France, the possession of Dunkirk when taken from Spain (1655). Cromwell determined to ally himself with France against Spain. France, though a Catholic country, did not adopt a Catholic policy abroad, while at home she tolerated Huguenots, and did not suffer her progress to be impeded by a blind submission to the Papacy. With Spain, on the other hand, collision was almost inevitable. For while she aspired to the leadership of Europe, her principles were in direct antagonism to all the new ideas, religious or political, that after a century of strife had at last forced their way into the hearts and minds of men. With the exclusion of Protestantism she shut all free life out of her dominions; and the Spaniards were recognized as the most fanatical nation in Europe, burners of heretics, supporters of the pope and the Inquisition, the declared enemies of freedom of conscience. It was in the West Indies that the obstructive policy of Spain came most into collision with the interests of England. Her kings based their claims to the possession of two continents on the bull of Pope Alexander VI., who in 1493 had granted them all lands they should discover from pole to pole, at the distance of a hundred leagues west from the Azores and Cape Verd Islands. On the strength of this bull they held that the discovery of an island gave them the right to the group, the discovery of a headland the right to a continent. Though this monstrous claim had quite broken down as far as the North American continent was concerned, the Spaniards, still recognizing “no peace beyond the line,” endeavoured to shut all Europeans but themselves out of any share in the trade or colonization of at least the southern half of the New World. They had imprisoned and murdered English traders, and had already exterminated one French and English colony at St. Kitts (1629), and two English settlements, one at Tortuga (1637), another at Santa Cruz (1650). Accordingly, when Spain sought an alliance, the protector required satisfaction for the blood of both the Republican envoy, Ascham,[228] and other murdered Englishmen; and demanded liberty of trade to the West Indies, and permission for English merchants and sailors to use their Bibles in any part of the Spanish dominions, unmolested by the Inquisition. “But,” said Cromwell, addressing his second Parliament, “there is not liberty of conscience to be had; neither is there satisfaction for injuries, nor for blood. When these two things were desired, the ambassador told us, ‘It was to ask his master’s two eyes;’ to ask both his eyes, asking _these_ things of him!”[229] Nor was Cromwell’s disdain expressed in words only. Two large fleets were fitted out by his orders, without any special purpose being assigned for them. The one sailed under Blake to the Mediterranean, with instructions to obtain redress from any nation bordering on that sea, that had committed injuries upon the English (Oct., 1654). This fleet touched other offenders but left Spain alone, for the present, as war had not yet been declared. The Duke of Tuscany paid £60,000 damages. The Dey of Algiers agreed to allow English captives to be ransomed. “The Algiers men-of-war,” says a paper of the time,[230] “are become associates with the English; they take Sallee ships and others that have any English in them, and bring them to General Blake, who at this very instant rides triumphant in the Levant.” The Governor of Tunis refused satisfaction. “Here are our castles,” he said, “do what you can: do you think we fear the show of your fleet?” Blake replied by shattering the castles with two hours’ bombardment, and then burning nine ships of war in the harbour. This example had its effect, and at Tripoli his demands obtained immediate compliance.[231] The second fleet, consisting of thirty vessels, with 4000 troops on board, was despatched to the West Indies. On opening their instructions at Barbadoes, the commanders, Admiral Penn and General Venables, found they were to surprise the two important islands of St. Domingo and Cuba. Though war with Spain had not yet been declared, there was no breach of faith, as whatever the relations of the two governments at home, no peace was recognized beyond the line. Penn and Venables sailed first, as directed by the instructions, to the former island. But instead of boldly entering the harbour of the capital, St. Domingo, they landed the troops at a point forty miles distant, thus giving the Spaniards time to prepare for defence (April 14, 1655). It was a fatal error, and a period of terrible disaster followed. Two regiments of Oliver’s old soldiers were engaged upon the expedition, but the troops mainly consisted of an undisciplined medley of Cavaliers, Levellers, and other unruly spirits from England, together with transported English, Scotch, and Irish Royalists from Barbadoes. The general and the admiral, the land and the sea forces, disagreed. There was a long march of forty miles under a burning sun. There was want of water and want of food. The soldiers nearly mutinied when forbidden to plunder, and from eating unripe fruits dropped down by hundreds sick and dead on their march. Two unsuccessful attempts were made to gain possession of the town. In the second the army fell into an ambuscade, when coming up a narrow path, flanked on either side by woods, where not above six could march abreast. The guns from a battery, raised by the Spaniards, fired right down the path; the foot fell back on the horse, and the whole army was thrown into confusion; the enemy fired from the woods on either side. “Never was anything so wedged as we, which made the enemy weary of killing.”[232] A body of seamen at length drove the Spaniards out of the woods, and night ended the slaughter; 1000 men had fallen. As Penn and Venables dared not return home while they had only this disastrous tale to bring to the protector’s ear, they agreed to sail for Jamaica, then in the possession of the Spaniards. ♦Conquest of Jamaica.♦ Here their success was greater, for the colonists, about five hundred in number, taken by surprise, fled upon their approach, and the island was reduced without opposition (May 10, 1655). In face of many obstacles offered by the climate, and the reckless and improvident habits of the English troops, now turned into colonists, Cromwell set to work to render Jamaica a flourishing settlement. He sent out able men as governors, shipped arms, provisions, and soldiers, directed the building of fortifications, and the planting of plantations, and, in short, laid the foundations of the future power of England in the West Indies.[233]
%BLAKE AT TENERIFFE.%
While war was now proclaimed with Spain, a treaty of peace was signed between France and England, Louis XIV. agreeing to banish Charles Stuart and his brothers from French territory (Oct. 24, 1655). ♦League with France.♦ This treaty was afterwards changed into a league, offensive and defensive (March 23, 1657), Cromwell undertaking to assist Louis with 6000 men in besieging Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk, on condition of receiving the two latter towns when reduced by the allied armies. By the occupation of these towns Cromwell intended to control the trade of the Channel, to hold the Dutch in check, who were then but unwilling friends, and to lessen the danger of invasion from any union of Royalists and Spaniards. The war opened in the year 1657 with another triumph by sea. During the summer of 1656, Blake had made a second expedition to the Mediterranean; he was now engaged in blockading Cadiz, when he learnt that a fleet with bullion, from Mexico, had taken refuge in the bay of Santa Cruz, in the island of Teneriffe. The horse-shoe bay was defended by castles at the two points, and by seven forts round the shore, connected by lines, bristling with guns and manned by musketeers. Ten small vessels were moored close to the shore; six large galleons farther out in the bay, their broadsides towards the sea. This position the Spaniards believed unassailable: they still thought that ships had no chance against forts. The master of a Dutch merchantman asked leave to sail out of the bay. “I am very sure,” he said, “Blake will presently be amongst you.” “Get you gone, if you will, and let Blake come, if he dares,” replied the Spaniards.[234] The English fleet numbered five-and-twenty sail. A favourable wind carried them into the bay. They attacked forts, ships, and galleons at once. After four hours’ fighting the forts were silenced, and all the Spanish vessels burnt with the exception of two, which were sunk. The English fleet started homewards the same day. Blake was worn out with hard service, and before he could receive from his countrymen the thanks and honours that were his due, he “who would never strike to any other enemy, struck his topmast to death,” within sight of Plymouth (Aug. 7). It was said of this gallant seaman, that with him valour never missed its reward, nor cowardice its punishment. Ever loyal to his country, all he said to his sailors when he announced a change in the government was, “’Tis not our duty to mind State affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us.” The chief of the State, indeed, was not the man to let foreigners “fool” us. In accordance with the terms of the French League, Cromwell had sent 6000 of his best troops to the Netherlands. But Mazarin, instead of besieging Mardyke and Dunkirk, commenced operations in the interior of the country, and tried to put his ally off with promises. “Tell him,” Cromwell wrote to Lockhart, his ambassador in France, “that to talk of what will be done next campaign are but parcels of words for children.” “If the French,” he wrote again, “are going to be so false as to give us no footing on that side the water, we must ask for satisfaction for our expense, and draw off our men.”[235] The story went that Cardinal Mazarin changed countenance whenever he heard the protector named, and was not so much afraid of the devil as he was of Oliver Cromwell. He dared not trifle with him any longer. Mardyke was besieged, taken in ten days, and delivered over to the English (Sept., 1657). In the spring of the following year the siege of Dunkirk was commenced (May, 1658). The Spaniards tried to relieve the town, but were completely defeated in an engagement, called the Battle of the Dunes from the sand hills among which it was fought; the defeat was mainly owing to the courage and discipline of Oliver’s troops, who won for themselves the name of “the Immortal Six Thousand.” James Stuart, the future king, commanded the left wing of the Spanish army, and narrowly escaped with his life. ♦Surrender of Mardyke and Dunkirk.♦ Ten days after the battle Dunkirk surrendered, and the French had no choice but to give over to the English ambassador the keys of a town they thought _un si bon morceau_ (June 25).[236] At this time no honour was considered too great to be paid to the protector’s envoys. During the siege of Dunkirk, Lord Fauconberg, lately become Cromwell’s son-in-law, arrived from England to meet Louis at Calais. The governor of the town, accompanied by many persons of quality, came to receive him on his landing; the king’s own Switzers guarded his door; the king and queen’s own officers attended him at meals. Louis held a private interview with him and remained uncovered the whole time. Cardinal Mazarin after a conference accompanied him downstairs, and saw him into his coach, a courtesy he seldom paid to his own sovereign.[237] Catholic governments dared not molest the protector’s subjects. An Englishman in Portugal was imprisoned by the Inquisition. Cromwell’s resident at Lisbon expostulated. The king replied that he had no authority over the Inquisition. At their next interview the resident intimated, that since his majesty had no power over the Inquisition, the protector declared war upon it. The Englishman was released.[238]
%THE VAUDOIS PROTECTED.%
Cromwell had not been content with protecting his own subjects only from persecution. While his friendship was still being courted by both France and Spain, the Duke of Savoy had ordered the Vaudois living in the valleys of the Savoy Alps to embrace the Catholic faith, or to quit their homes within three days (Jan. 25, 1655). It was the depth of winter, the people were slow to obey, and appealed for aid and advice to the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. The duke, to suppress discontent, quartered soldiers in the valleys. Quarrels naturally ensued, and horrible barbarities were committed by the troops upon the inhabitants of the valley of Lucerna, whose sufferings stand commemorated in Milton’s noble sonnet. Cromwell appeared as their champion. For their immediate needs he started a subscription list with a donation of £2000. The heart of England was moved with sympathy: a regular canvass was made; the soldiers gave freely, and for love or shame almost everybody subscribed. An agent was sent at once, by Cromwell’s orders, to intercede with the Duke of Savoy in their favour. Milton, by his directions, wrote letters to the Kings of France, Sweden, and Denmark, to the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and to the States of Holland, appealing to their feelings of humanity to take measures to put an end to these cruelties. The pope’s interference was prevented by a hint that he might hear the thunder of English cannon off Civita Vecchia. The duke himself was an ally of Louis XIV., and no treaty would Cromwell sign with France unless the Vaudois were first protected from persecution. In vain Louis objected that he had no right to interfere with an independent prince, such as the Duke of Savoy. Finding Cromwell was not to be put off, he consented to mediate, and by his advice the duke forgave his rebellious subjects, and confirmed their ancient privileges.[239] The disgraces of Buckingham’s administration were wiped out by this vigorous policy, and the position of England abroad was even higher than it was in the memorable days of Elizabeth. The remembrance of these successes made the nation smart the more when the Restoration reduced her to the position of a dependent upon France.
%SPANISH WAR JUSTIFIABLE.%
Foreign policy, indeed, must be judged on other considerations than mere national glorification. No war can be approved that is undertaken merely for the sake of conquest, increased revenue, or personal aggrandizement. A nation, however, is often justified, not only in defending itself against insult and wrong, but even in entering on an aggressive war, when made either to preserve the liberty of other nations from foreign attack, or to wrest an advantage which belongs by right to all mankind from the grasp of some single power. Cromwell’s policy was, in the main, confined to these ends. It was an act of self-defence to punish Spain for the wrongs she had committed upon English subjects; it was an act of public right in the widest sense of the term to deprive Spain of her unjust monopoly of trade with the West Indies. On the other hand, if it is said that England gained too much by the war for her motives in carrying it on to be regarded as perfectly pure, in the first place, it is natural that the most injured party should be chief prosecutor of wrong; and secondly, the best interests of the world were served by the protector’s policy of making England the head of Protestant States, and upholding the cause of liberty of conscience. At least one half of Western Europe was governed by tyrants, who were bent on crushing free institutions and the free expression of opinion by imprisonment, banishment, torture, and the stake. Cromwell, representing all that was best and highest in the nation, declared eternal hostility to these powers of obstruction and reaction, and flinging the weight of England into the cause of freedom and progress, raised her, as much by moral as by material force, to the foremost place amongst European nations.
In judging the policy of wars defended on public or international grounds, three criteria may be applied; first, has the principle invoked been sanctioned by history as one really tending to the highest good of mankind? secondly, has the attempt a fair chance of success? and, thirdly, is the war likely to entail a more than compensating weight of misery on the poor and struggling classes of the nation? Cromwell’s policy has passed two of these tests, it will be seen that it passes the third too. The government which effected such great results was carried on at comparatively a small cost. No waste, no corruption, was allowed, and the protector offered to lay the accounts of the expenditure open to inspection. The tax for the support of the army and navy was reduced from £120,000 to £90,000, and afterwards to £60,000 a month.
%NEW HOUSE OF LORDS.%
The success of Cromwell’s foreign policy, however glorious it rendered their country, yet failed to conciliate the Republicans, who seized the opportunity of the re-assembling of Parliament to display their enmity (20th Jan.). According to the terms of the Petition and Advice, this Parliament consisted of two Houses, with the second House composed, not of the old peers, of whom the majority were Royalists, but of lords newly created for the purpose by the writs of the protector. To create lords whose title to the peerage, like that of Oliver’s to the throne, rested not on hereditary descent but on superior capacity, was an overbold attempt to return by a short cut to the old forms of the constitution. For the unquestioning, unreasoning respect given to the possessors of titles is of slow growth, and new creations can only pass muster, if few enough to be undistinguishable among the mass of the old. These new lords were regarded by high and low as impostors. Out of sixty-three persons summoned to the protector’s Upper House some twenty declined. Even the Earl of Warwick refused to attend, though a personal friend, and the grandfather of Cromwell’s son-in-law, Mr. Rich. The old earl said that he could not bring himself to sit in the same assembly with Col. Pride, once a drayman, and Col. Hewson, once a shoemaker. Members of the Commons no longer had to be approved by the council before taking their seats, for an article of the Petition and Advice required that, as in former times, persons chosen to serve in Parliament should not be excluded from sitting, except by the judgment of the House of which they were members. Thus, any of the opponents of the government, who were excluded before,[240] were now suffered to take their seats without opposition, on swearing the requisite oath of allegiance to the protector. The violent Republicans, Scot, Haslerig, Bradshaw, and others took the oath without scruple, and then at once set to work to attack the government. Aided by the absence of many of Cromwell’s ablest friends, who had been removed to the Upper House, they readily obtained a majority to follow their lead. First they debated what rights belonged to the ‘other House,’ and tried to prove that the Petition and Advice gave it no co-ordinate power with the Commons in making laws and imposing taxes. They then proceeded to dispute with the protector’s party as to the name they should call the ‘other House,’ refusing to allow it that of ‘House of Lords.’ For three weeks, while they occupied their time in these useless debates, dangers multiplied around the government. Charles Stuart, to whom the Dutch had sold twenty vessels, came to Ostend, intending, if only the Royalists would first attempt a rising in his behalf, to cross the Channel at the head of several regiments of transported Irishmen. At home, all the disaffected began to engage in conspiracy, or in trying to get up petitions hostile to the government. There was one petition being prepared for the restoration of the Stuarts; a second for the reduction of Cromwell’s authority; while the Republicans were secretly publishing seditious papers, and tampering with the army, in which they still possessed considerable influence. The protector’s passion rose. The Parliament, he said, represented all the bad humours of the nation, and had become the Parliament of the Republican, Haslerig.[241] Though it had sat but fifteen days, he determined to dissolve it; its continuance would soon have led to anarchy and another civil war.
%SECOND SESSION--DISSOLUTION.%
“That,” he said, addressing the members of the two Houses, “which brought me into the capacity I now stand in, was the Petition and Advice given me by you; who, in reference to the ancient constitution, did draw me to accept the place of protector. There is not a man living can say I sought it; no, not a man nor woman treading upon English ground. But contemplating the sad condition of these nations, relieved from an intestine war into a six or seven years’ peace, I did think the nation happy therein!... 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, rather than undertaken such a government as this. But undertaking it by the Advice and Petition of you, I did look that you who had offered it unto me should make it good.... I do not speak to these gentlemen” (pointing to his right hand), “or lords, or whatsoever you will call them. I speak not this to them, but to _you_” (gentlemen of the House of Commons). “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 sat, than it hath been from the rising of the last session to this day, through the intention of devising a Commonwealth again, that some people might be the men that might rule all! And they are endeavouring to engage the army to carry that thing.... These things tend to nothing else 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. It hath been not only your endeavour to pervert the army while you have been sitting, and to draw them to state the question” [_i.e._, to petition] “about a Commonwealth; but some of you have been listing of persons, by commission of Charles Stuart, to join with any insurrection that may be made. And what is like to come upon this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present blood and confusion? And if this be so, I do assign it to this cause--your not consenting to what you did invite me by your Petition and Advice, as that which might prove the settlement of the nation. And if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time that an end be put to your sitting. And I do dissolve this Parliament. And let God be judge between you and me” (4th Feb.).
Cromwell, in his noble zeal for liberty, had really attempted an impossibility. Parliamentary government is perfectly feasible after a mere change of dynasty, but after revolutionary forces have been allowed to run their course, time must solidify existing rule before it can be exposed to the rude dissolvents of discussion and debate. A real revolution decomposes a nation into numberless parties, each of which cannot be content with anything less than all it aims at, and in a free Parliament any two of these parties, however opposite in policy, may combine for the sole purpose of destroying any intermediate party which seems to be more represented by the ruler of the time. It was natural for intolerant Presbyterians to wish for the overthrow of the Puritan apostle of toleration, and natural for Republicans to hate the man who ruled where their oligarchy had failed; but both showed an incapacity for discerning the possibilities of the time, and for recognizing facts under forms. The alliance of these two parties against the protectorate could only promote the Episcopacy which was fatal to the one, and that absolute monarchy which was the true enemy of the other.
%CONSPIRACIES CRUSHED.%
The Parliament dissolved, Cromwell set his hand to crushing the conspiracies that had sprung up around. “An old friend of yours is in town,” he said to Lord Broghill,[242] now a councillor, “the Marquis of Ormond; he lodges in Drury Lane, at the Papist surgeon’s; if you have a mind to save your old acquaintance, let him know that I am informed where he is and what he is doing.” On this hint, Ormond, who had ventured across the Channel in order, if possible, to concert a rising, hastened back to Holland, and told his young master that his friends were far more ready to promise than to perform. The Royalists were, in fact, disconcerted at the dissolution of the Parliament, on which they had relied as the cat’s paw to wrest the protector’s power from him. They now refused to venture property and life on what seemed a hopeless cast. Several conspirators were already apprehended and in prison. Five Royalists, engaged in various plots, were tried by a high court of justice, and executed as traitors. Officers implicated in Republican plots were cashiered. Disaffection, however, had not spread far, and the larger part of the army remained devoted to their general. Summoning the officers to Whitehall, Cromwell explained to them the cause of the sudden dissolution of the Parliament, and the plots and conspiracies to which its sitting had given rise, and expressed a hope that if he should be forced to take money by arbitrary means, they would give him their support. “We will live and die with you,” they shouted in reply.[243]
In spite of the prejudice of the nation in favour of its old line of princes, the peaceful and order-loving classes were beginning to dread any change of government. Englishmen, even if they disliked the usurper, could hardly fail to be proud of their great countryman, who had humiliated the Spaniards, and raised England to the first place among European powers. National pride could not fail to be gratified by the surrender of Dunkirk, and the unprecedented honours paid to England’s ambassadors. The very energy and success with which plots were suppressed and political enemies disconcerted, itself awoke admiration. The protector’s dignity, his lenity, the uprightness of his administration, forced respect even from unwilling subjects. He was now intending, within the course of a few months, to summon another Parliament, in order to avoid resorting to arbitrary means for the raising of money. By taking means to exclude the Republicans, he might have obtained one friendly to his government, and would perhaps again have been offered the title of king. There was a widespread feeling that the ‘fall of the present government would be the occasion of great disasters to the nation.’ The protector’s popularity had been much increased by the possession of Dunkirk; petitions were even sent in by some counties, desiring him to take the title of king; and whether men feared or hoped, the expectation that he would be crowned was general throughout the country.[244]
%CROMWELL’S LAST ILLNESS.%
But this expectation was never to be realized. Sorrows fell upon Cromwell in his own family, and these to him were harder to bear than the plots and, machinations of his enemies. Death had already deprived him of two relatives--Robert Rich, lately married to his youngest daughter (16th Feb.), and the Earl of Warwick, a firm friend to himself, the young man’s grandfather (19th April). And now his favourite daughter, Lady Claypole, “of excellent parts, civil to all persons, courteous, friendly,”[245] lay ill at Hampton Court, “under great extremity of bodily pain,” dying in fact by some terrible internal disease. The protector was constantly by her bedside, and so overpowered with grief for his dying child, that he had but little attention to bestow on public business. The groom of his bedchamber relates how “his sense of her outward misery, in the pains she endured, took deep impression upon him, who indeed was ever a most indulgent and tender father.”[246] He also relates how the text, ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,’ was what restored him from despair. For “this scripture,” as Cromwell himself said, “did once save my life when my eldest son died, which went as a dagger to my heart, indeed it did.”[247] Lady Claypole died (6th Aug.), and a fortnight after her death his own health, which had for some time past been failing, quite broke down. He was seized with a dangerous ague, and by advice of his physicians removed from Hampton Court to Whitehall (21st Aug.).
%DEATH OF CROMWELL.%
Men prayed for his recovery, looking into the dark future with dismay at the anarchy that might ensue, when the one man was gone who could hold the rival parties down and compel them to live in peace.[248] “His heart,” says one who then attended him, “was so carried out for God and His people--yea indeed, for some who had added no little sorrow to him, that at this time he seemed to forget his own family and nearest relations.” “He would frequently say, ‘God is good, indeed He is,’ and would speak it with much cheerfulness and fervour of spirit in the midst of his pains. Again he said, ‘I would 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.’ He was very restless most part of the [Thursday] night, speaking often to himself. And there being something to drink offered him, he was desired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep, unto which he answered, ‘It is not my design to drink or sleep; but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.’”[249] The next day was the 3rd of September, his lucky day, the anniversary of his victories of Dunbar and Worcester, and at four o’clock in the afternoon of that day Oliver Cromwell lay dead.
%CHARACTER OF CROMWELL.%
Born the year before the century began, he had not lived out his sixtieth year, when he was thus called away, but the work he had done, the perils and privations he had faced, might well have taken even more than ten years from man’s allotted term. It was nearly two centuries before justice was done to his memory. Strange that England should have been so long deluded into believing that the noblest of her sons could have been the ‘great wicked man’ that blind and bitter partisans depicted; he a mere revolutionary demagogue, who was the restorer of order at home, the terror of tyranny abroad; he a hard and selfish usurper, whose stout nerves quailed at last, not at the attempts of assassins, but at the agony of a daughter’s sufferings; he a prince of hypocrites, who, in the last and ‘thickest press of domestic anarchies,’ found time and means to shield the poor Protestants of Piedmont,[250] and whose last half-conscious murmurings were of the goodness of God and of His presence with His people! The change in the current of opinion on this point has been mainly due to the publication of the letters and speeches of Cromwell.[251] The peculiar value of Mr. Carlyle’s labours has been thus admirably stated by the closest student of those times, whose testimony is the more valuable, as that of one who had himself held a different view of the character and aims of the greatest of the statesmen of the Commonwealth. “To collect and arrange in chronological succession, and with elucidatory comment, every authentic letter and speech left by Cromwell, was to subject him to a test from which falsehood could hardly escape; and the result has been to show, we think, conclusively and beyond further dispute, that through all these speeches and letters one mind runs consistently. Whatever a man’s former prepossessions may have been, he cannot accompany the utterer of these speeches, the writer of these letters, from their first page to their last, travelling with him from his grazing lands at St. Ives up to his protector’s throne; watching him in the tenderest intercourse with those dearest to him; observing him in affairs of State or in the ordinary business of the world, in offices of friendship or in conference with sovereigns and senates; listening to him as he comforts a persecuted preacher, or threatens a persecuting prince; and remain at last with any other conviction than that in all conditions and on every occasion Cromwell’s tone is substantially the same, and that in the passionate fervour of his religious feeling, under its different and varying modifications, the true secret of his life must be sought, and will be found. Everywhere recognizable is the sense, deeply inter-penetrated with his nature and life, of spiritual dangers, of temporal vicissitudes, and of never-ceasing responsibility to the Eternal. ‘Ever in his Great Taskmaster’s eye.’ Unless you can believe that you have an actor continually before you, you must believe that this man did unquestionably recognize in his Bible the authentic voice of God; and had an irremovable persuasion that according as, from that sacred source, he learned the divine law here and did it, or neglected to learn and to do it, infinite blessedness or infinite misery hereafter awaited him for evermore.”[252]
FOOTNOTES:
[223] Joining the Ribble just south of Preston, the scene of battle of 17th August, 1648.
[224] See the lines found among Col. Overton’s papers, quoted in Guizot, ii. vi.
[225] Abridged from Burton in Carl., iii. 217.
[226] Clarendon State Papers, iii. 343.
[227] Guizot, i. 418; Forster, Biog. Essays.
[228] See p. 278.
[229] Carl., iii. 164.
[230] Ellis, Orig. Letters, 2nd series iii. 378.
[231] Heath, 692; Thurloe, iii. 413.
[232] From collection of Thurloe, iii. 510.
[233] Thurloe, v. 130; Carl., iii. 129.
[234] Heath, 721.
[235] Carl., iii. 311, 313.
[236] Thurloe, vii. 174.
[237] Thurloe, vi. 157.
[238] Burton’s Diary, Introduction.
[239] Guizot, ii. 529; Carlyle, iii. 108; Lingard, viii. 233.
[240] See p. 348.
[241] Whitelock, 672; Documents in App. to Guizot, ii. 629.
[242] See p. 304.
[243] Thurloe, vi. 786; Guizot (Documents), ii. 610.
[244] Thurloe, vii. 144; Guizot (Documents), ii. 631, 643.
[245] Whitelock, 674.
[246] King’s Tracts., 792; Carl., iii. 368.
[247] Robert, who was buried at Felsted, in Essex, æt. 19, in 1639 (Forster’s Essays, p. 54).
[248] Thurloe, vii. 55.
[249] King’s Tracts., 792.
[250] 26 May, 1658; Carl., iii. 362.
[251] 1st ed., pub. Dec., 1845.
[252] Forster, Essays, p. 33.