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."