THE FALL OF THE GREAT MINISTER
The moon's circle was half-filled with light, a mist rose and hung
above the river, a sullen rain was falling through the windless air,
as the gentlemen left the House and dispersed among the excited crowd
to their dwellings. Along the river the people were dense, they surged
and gathered along the banks from Westminster to St. Katherine's wharf,
shouting, singing, flinging up their hats, and wringing each other's
hands for joy.
They had just been regaled with a sight many of them had never dared to
hope to see. The mist and the rain had not obscured from their hungry
eyes the barge in which my Lord Strafford, that morning the greatest
subject in two kingdoms, had gone by, a prisoner, to the Tower.
He stood for an absolute monarchy, a dominant priesthood, taxation
without law, the Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission, even as
the Queen stood for Papistry and the possible employment of foreign
force, and the two between them represented all that was most hateful
to the English.
Therefore it was neither the usual levity of crowds nor the usual
vulgar rejoicing in fallen greatness that animated these dense throngs
of Londoners, but a deep, almost awful sense that a definite and
tremendous struggle had begun between King and people, and had begun
with a great victory on the popular side.
It had been a day of smouldering excitement that frequently burst into
riotings between Westminster and Whitehall. In the morning my lord,
with a guard of halberdiers, had gone down as usual to the House; after
a little while he had returned to the palace, accompanied each time by
the furious shouting and groans of the people. The truth was that his
charges against Pym were not yet ready, and he wished to consult his
master.
The crowd, however, waited, fed by rumours that came from time to time
by means of those who had the entry into the House; by the afternoon it
was definitely known that Mr. Pym had cleared the Lobby and locked the
door of the House, while a discussion of grave importance took place.
So the people waited, patient but insistent, trusting Mr. Pym and those
gentlemen shut up with him, yet watchful lest they should cheat them.
Nor were they disappointed; at five o'clock out came Mr. Pym at
the head of some three hundred Members, and, passing through the
frantically applauding crowd, went to the House of Lords.
Here, at the Bar, he told the Peers, that by the command of the Commons
in Parliament and in the name of all the Commons of England, he accused
the Earl of Strafford of high treason, and demanded that he be put in
custody while they produced the grounds of their accusation.
Then came my lord again, hastening back from Whitehall (where the news
had reached him), with an assured and proud demeanour, and so into
the House, with a gloomy and unseeing countenance for the hostile
throng; then more suspense, while excitement increased to a point where
it could not be any longer contained, and vented itself in fierce
rattlings on the very doorsteps of Westminster Hall and rebellious
tumults at the very gates of Whitehall, where the guards were doubled
and stood with drawn swords, for there had been some ugly shouting of
the Queen's name, and some hoarse demand that John Pym should accuse
her also of high treason against the realm of England, and haul her
forth with her black Papist brood of priests to answer the charges
against her, even as my lord was answering, or must answer them.
Before the misty evening was far advanced, and while the moon hung yet
sickly pale in a scarcely dark sky, the prologue to this tragedy was
accomplished, and my lord left the House where he had so long ruled
supreme, and was conveyed down the sullen tide to the Tower.
And when he had at last gone, and his guarded barge was absorbed into
the shadows of the Traitor's Gate, a kind of awe and silence fell
over London. The great minister, the King's favourite, the man who
was both his master's brain and conscience, had fallen so swiftly, so
irrecoverably, as London knew in her heart, that there was almost a
terror mingled with the triumph; for all knew that Strafford was not
one like Somerset or Buckingham, but a man of the utmost capacity for
courage, intelligence, and all the arts of government.
The Commons of Parliament, who had done this thing, scattered, weary
and quiet, to their various homes and lodgings, and Mr. Cromwell and
Mr. Hampden walked through the falling rain, communing with their
hearts.
As they neared the palace which stood brilliant with flambeaux lights
flashing on the drawn swords at the gates, Mr. Hampden turned his
gentle face towards his companion and said, "What will the King do?"
"The King?" repeated Mr. Cromwell, lifting earnest eyes to the silent
palace. "I would I could come face to face with the King--surely he is
a man who might be persuaded of the truth of things if he were not so
surrounded by frivolous, wrong, and wanton counsellors."
"I believe," answered John Hampden, "that His Majesty rooteth his
pretences so firmly in Divine Right--(being besides upheld in this by
all the clergy), that he would consider it blasphemy to abate one jot
of his claims. See this pass we are come to, Mr. Cromwell; we deal with
a man with whom no compromise is possible--ask Mr. Pym, who tried
to serve him--he will excuse himself, he will shift and turn, but he
will never give way, and when he is most quiet he will always break
his tranquillity with some monstrous imprudence, as this late forcing
of the Archbishop's prayer book on the Scots, thereby provoking a
peaceable nation into rebellion."
Mr. Cromwell turned up the collar of his cloak, for the cold dampness
of the night was increasing, and he was liable to rheumatism. He made
no answer, and Mr. Hampden, glancing expectantly at his thoughtful
face, repeated his query--
"What will the King do now?"
"What can he do?" replied the Member for Cambridge. "Strafford falleth
through serving him, and likely enough came to London on promise of the
King's protection. The King will stand by Strafford."
"Then it will remain to be seen which is the stronger--Parliament or
His Majesty," said John Hampden, and he sighed as if he foresaw ahead
a long and bitter struggle. "I tell thee this," he added, with an
earnestness almost sad, "that if the people are disappointed of justice
on my lord, the King is not safe in his own capital, nor yet the Queen.
Thou hast observed, Mr. Cromwell, how well hated the Queen is?"
"A Papist and a Frenchwoman," replied the other, "how could she
hope for English loyalty? And she is meddling--of all things the
English hate a meddling woman. Her ways might do well in France, but
here we like them not. I am sorry for my Lady Strafford," he added
irrelevantly, and with a strange note of tenderness in his rough voice.
"What are all these issues to her? Yet she must suffer for them. I saw
her yesterday, and she was as still for terror as a chased deer fallen
spent of breath, and yet had the courage to move and speak with pride,
poor gentlewoman!"
"We shall see many piteous things before England be tranquil," returned
Mr. Hampden sadly. "Chief among them this discomfiture of patient
women. The Lord support them."
They were now at Mr. Cromwell's door.
"Wilt thou come up, my cousin?" he asked, laying a detaining hand on
the other's damp coat sleeve.
"This evening hold me excused," answered Mr. Hampden. "I have some
country gentlemen at my entertainment, and I would not disappoint them."
So they parted as quietly as if this momentous day had held nothing
of note, and Mr. Cromwell went up to his modest chamber and lit the
candles and placed them on a writing-table which held a Bible among
the quills and papers. He stood for a while thoughtfully; he had flung
off his mantle and his hat, and his well-made, strong figure showed
erect in a plain, rather ill-cut, suit of dark green cloth, his band
and cuffs were of linen, and there was no single ornament nor an inch
of lace about his whole attire; indeed, his lack of the ordinary
elegancies of a gentleman's costume would have seemed to some an
affectation, and to all a sure indication that he had now definitely
joined the increasingly powerful Puritan party which had set itself
to destroy every vestige of ornament in England--from Bishops to lace
handkerchiefs, as their opponents sneeringly remarked. These enemies
were not, perhaps, in a humour for sneering to-night when the chief of
them lay straightened between prison walls. So thought Mr. Cromwell as
he stood thoughtfully before the little table that bore the Bible, and
looked down on the closed covers.
Above the table hung a mirror; the glass was old and cracked, and
into the frame were stuck various papers which showed how the present
possessor of the room disregarded the original use of the mirror.
Sufficient of the glass, however, remained unobscured to reflect the
head and shoulders of Oliver Cromwell, and this reflection, with the
dark background and the blurred surface of the glass, was like a fine
portrait, and by reason of the absolute consciousness of the man, like
a portrait of his soul as well as of his features.
His expression was at once fierce and tender and deeply thoughtful;
the brow, so carelessly shaded by the disordered brown hair, was free
from any lines, the grey eyes seemed as if they looked curiously into
the future, the lips were lightly set together, and seemed as if they
might at any minute quiver into speech, the line of his jaw and cheek
had a look of serene fierceness, like the noble idea of strength given
by the jaw of a lion.
So he looked, reflected in the old mirror and lit by the two common
candles, and if one had suddenly glanced over his shoulder into the
glass and seen that face, they would have thought they looked at a
painting of abstract qualities, not at a compound human being, at
this moment so utterly was his rugged look of strength and fortitude
spiritualized by the radiance of the soul within.
Outside the rain fell and there was no sound but the drip of the drops
on the sill; the great city was silent after the tumult of the day,
most people were eating, sleeping, going their ways as if there was
no King humiliated utterly, raging in his chamber; no Queen weeping
among her priests; no great man in prison writing to his wife: "Hold up
your heart, look to the children and your house, and at last, by God's
good pleasure, we shall have our deliverance"; no quiet gentleman from
Huntingdon standing in a quiet room and meditating things that would
change this city and this land as it had not been changed since it bore
the yoke of kingship.
To the many, even to Mr. Pym and Mr. Hampden, the fall of Strafford
might seem a tremendous thing, a shrewd blow against tyranny and a
daring act, but to this younger man, with his deeper, more mystical,
religious fervour, his practical and immeasurable courage, the sweeping
aside of the King's favourite was but the first of many acts that would
utterly alter the face of England.
Strafford might have gone, but there were other things to go--Papistry,
the Star Chamber, ship money, and other civil wrongs, bishops, prayer
books, church ornaments and choirs, and other pollutions of the
pure faith of Christ, and there was a burning, blazing ideal to be
followed--the ideal of what might be made of England in moral worth, in
civic liberty, in that domestic dignity and foreign power that had made
the reign of Elizabeth Tudor splendid throughout the world.
This might be done; but how was a poor country gentleman, untrained in
diplomacy or war, to accomplish it?
How dare he presume that he was meant to accomplish it?
He moved from the table abruptly and, going to the window, rested his
head against the frame and stared through the soiled panes into the
dark street where the lights glimmered sparsely at long intervals in
the heavy winter air.
He recalled and clung to the memory of the vision that he had had in
the old barn outside St. Ives; the certainty that he was in covenant
with the Lord to do the Lord's work in England had pierced his soul
with the same sharpness as a dagger might pierce the flesh. At times
the remembered glamour faded, weariness, misgivings, would cloud
the glorious conviction--yet deep-rooted in his noble spirit it
remained. God had spoken to him and he was to do God's works,--but the
practical humanity in him, the strong English sense and sound judgment
demanded--how?
He was of full middle age and unaccomplished in anything save farming
and such knowledge of the law as less than a year's training could give
him. His education had been the usual education of a gentleman, but he
had less learning than most, for his college days had been short, owing
to the death of his father and the sudden call to responsibilities, and
he had absolutely no love for any of the arts and sciences. How then
was he equipped to combat the immense powers arrayed against him--the
King, the Church, immemorial tradition, custom, usage, the weight of
aristocracy, the example of Europe--for his design, though yet vague,
was to create in England a constitution for Church and State for which
he could see no pattern anywhere within the world.
He felt no greatness in himself, he was even doubtful of his own
capacity. Though he was already much hearkened to, principally, he
thought, by reason of his connexion with Hampden and the vast number of
relations he had in the House, still, on the few occasions when he had
spoken in public, as when he had taken up the cause of the Fen people
in the late question of the drainage scheme, his ardour and impetuosity
had gone far to spoil his cause, and he was well behind, in political
weight and party influence, such men as Pym and Hampden and even
Falkland and Hyde, Holles and Haselrig, Culpeper and Strode.
Yet with trumpet rhythm there beat on his brain--"Something to do and
I to do it! Work to be done and I to accomplish it! Something to be
gained and I to gain it! The Lord's battles to be fought and I to fight
them!"
He moved from the window; the room was cold and the candles burnt with
a tranquil frosty light. Mr. Cromwell went to the great book lying
between the two plain brass sticks, the only book he ever read, the
book in which, to him, was comprised the whole of life and all we know
of the earth, of hell, of heaven.
He opened the Bible at random; the thick leaves fell back at the
psalms, and his passionate grey eyes fell on a sentence that he read
aloud with a deep note of triumph in his heavy masculine voice--
"_O help us against the enemy; for vain is the help of man. Through
God we shall do great acts: and it is he that shall tread down our
enemies._"
"Through ... _God_" repeated Mr. Cromwell, "we ... shall do ... _great_
acts."
He put his hand to the plain little sword at his side, that had
hitherto been of no use save to give evidence of his gentility on
market days at Huntingdon and Ely.... "_Great_ acts," he repeated again.
As he stood so, his right hand crossed to his sword, his left resting
on the open Bible, his chin sunk on to his breast and his whole face
softened and veiled with thought, he was not conscious of the humble
room, the patter of the rain, the two coarse candles poorly dispelling
the darkness. He was only aware of a sudden access of power, a revival
of the burning sensation that had come to him in the old barn perfumed
with hay at St. Ives.
His doubts and confusions, misgivings and fears, vanished, this inner
conviction and power seemed sufficient to combat all the foes concealed
in the quiet city--all, even to the King himself....
He went to his knees as swiftly as if smitten into that attitude.
"Through God," he whispered, "we shall do _great_ acts."
He hid his strong face in his strong hands and prayed.