a baron, then a viscount, and afterward Earl of Strafford; made him
president of the council of York, and deputy of Ireland; and regarded
him as his chief minister and counsellor. By his eminent talents and
abilities Strafford merited all the confidence which his master reposed
in him; his character was stately and austere--more fitted to procure
esteem than love; his fidelity to the king was unshaken; but as he now
employed all his counsels to support the prerogative, which he had
formerly bent all his endeavors to diminish, his virtue seems not to
have been entirely pure, but to have been susceptible of strong
impressions from private interest and ambition.
The death of Strafford was too important a stroke of party to be left
unattempted by any expedient however extraordinary. Besides the great
genius and authority of that minister, he had threatened some of the
popular leaders with an impeachment; and had he not himself been
suddenly prevented by the impeachment of the Commons, he had, that very
day, it was thought, charged Pym, Hambden, and others with treason for
having invited the Scots to invade England. A bill of attainder was,
therefore, brought into the Lower House immediately after finishing
these pleadings; and preparatory to it a new proof of the earl’s guilt
was produced, in order to remove such scruples as might be entertained
with regard to a method of proceeding so unusual and irregular.
Sir Henry Vane, secretary, had taken some notes of a debate in council
after the dissolution of the last Parliament; and being at a distance,
he had sent the keys of his cabinet, as was pretended, to his son, Sir
Henry, in order to search for some papers, which were necessary for
completing a marriage settlement. Young Vane, falling upon this paper of
notes, deemed the matter of the utmost importance, and immediately
communicated it to Pym, who now produced the paper before the House of
Commons. The question before the council was, _offensive or defensive
war with the Scots_. The king proposes this difficulty, “But how can I
undertake offensive war, if I have no more money?” The answer ascribed
to Strafford was in these words: “Borrow of the city a hundred thousand
pounds; go on vigorously to levy ship-money. Your majesty having tried
the affections of your people, you are absolved and loose from all rules
of government, and may do what power will admit. Your majesty, having
tried all ways, shall be acquitted before God and man. And you have an
army in Ireland, which you may employ to reduce this kingdom to
obedience; for I am confident the Scots can not hold out five months.”
There followed some counsels of Laud and Cottington, equally violent,
with regard to the king’s being absolved from all rules of government.
The evidence of Secretary Vane, though exposed to such insurmountable
objections, was the real cause of Strafford’s unhappy fate, and made the
bill of attainder pass the Commons with no greater opposition than that
of fifty-nine dissenting votes. But there remained two other branches of
the legislature, the king and the lords, whose assent was requisite; and
these, if left to their free judgment, it was easily foreseen, would
reject the bill without scruple or deliberation. To overcome this
difficulty, the popular leaders employed expedients, for which they were
beholden partly to their own industry, partly to the indiscretion of
their adversaries.
Strafford, in passing from his apartment to Tower Hill, where the
scaffold was erected, stopped under Laud’s windows, with whom he had
long lived in intimate friendship, and entreated the assistance of his
prayers in those awful moments which were approaching. The aged primate
dissolved in tears; and having pronounced, with a broken voice, a tender
blessing on his departing friend, sank into the arms of his attendants.
Strafford, still superior to his fate, moved on with an elated
countenance, and with an air even of greater dignity than what usually
attended him. He wanted that consolation which commonly supports those
who perish by the stroke of injustice and oppression; he was not buoyed
up by glory, nor by the affectionate compassion of the spectators. Yet
his mind, erect and undaunted, found resources within itself, and
maintained its unbroken resolution amid the terrors of death and the
triumphant exultations of his misguided enemies. His discourse on the
scaffold was full of decency and courage. “He feared,” he said, “that
the omen was bad for the intended reformation of the state, that it
commenced with the shedding of innocent blood.”
Having bid a last adieu to his brother and friends who attending him,
and having sent a blessing to his nearer relations who were absent--“And
now,” said he, “I have nigh done! One stroke will make my wife a widow,
my dear children fatherless, deprive my poor servants of their indulgent
master, and separate me from my affectionate brother and all my friends!
But let God be to you and them all in all!” Going to disrobe and prepare
himself for the block, “I thank God,” said he, “that I am nowise afraid
of death, nor am daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down
my head at this time, as ever I did when going to repose!” With one blow
was a period put to his life by the executioner.
Thus perished, in the forty-ninth year of his age, the Earl of
Strafford, one of the most eminent personages that has appeared in
England. Though his death was loudly demanded as a satisfaction to
justice, and an atonement for the many violations of the constitution,
it may safely be affirmed that the sentence by which he fell was an
enormity greater than the worst of those which his implacable enemies
prosecuted with so much cruel industry. The people in their rage had
totally mistaken the proper object of their resentment. All the
necessities, or more properly speaking, the difficulties, by which the
king had been induced to use violent expedients for raising supply were
the result of measures previous to Strafford’s favor; and if they arose
from ill conduct, he, at least, was entirely innocent.
Even those violent expedients themselves, which occasioned the complaint
that the constitution was subverted, had been all of them conducted, so
far as appeared, without his counsel or assistance. And whatever his
private advice might be, this salutary maxim he failed not, often and
publicly, to inculcate in the king’s presence, that if any
[Illustration: OLIVER CROMWELL.]
inevitable necessity ever obliged the sovereign to violate the laws,
this license ought to be practiced with extreme reserve, and as soon as
possible a just atonement be made to the constitution for any injury
which it might sustain from such dangerous precedents. The first
Parliament after the restoration reversed the bill of attainder; and
even a few weeks after Strafford’s execution this very Parliament
remitted to his children the more severe consequences of his sentence,
as if conscious of the violence with which the prosecution had been
conducted.
OLIVER CROMWELL.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
[Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth, and leader of the
Revolution of 1640, born 1599, died 1658. Descended from a good
race, connected with some of the best families in England, he
became identified with the Puritan cause in the contest with King
Charles I. He took active part in hostilities from the first,
formed the famous Ironsides, and reorganized the parliamentary
army, of which he soon became the chief general. He was active in
the formation of the High Commission, which tried and condemned the
king, and thenceforward was the ruler of England. It was not till
1651, however, that he became the titular Lord Protector, and
reorganized the government mainly on the lines of monarchy.]
The soul of his party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to peaceful occupations,
he had, at more than forty years of age, accepted a commission in the
parliamentary army. He saw precisely where the strength of the Royalists
lay, and by what means alone that strength could be overpowered. He saw
that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw
also that there were abundant and excellent materials for the purpose,
materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of which the
gallant squadrons of the king were composed. It was necessary to look
for recruits who were not mere mercenaries, for recruits of decent
station and grave character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty.
With such men he filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected them
to a discipline more rigid than had ever before been known in England,
he administered to their intellectual and moral nature stimulants of
fearful potency. Cromwell made haste to organize the whole army on the
same principles on which he had organized his own regiment. As soon as
this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The
Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage equal to their own,
enthusiasm stronger than their own, and discipline such as was utterly
wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax
and Cromwell were men of a different breed from the soldiers of Essex.
At Naseby took place the first great encounter between the Royalists and
the remodeled army of the Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was
complete and decisive. It was followed by other triumphs in rapid
succession. In a few months the authority of the Parliament was fully
established over the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was
by them, in a manner which did not much exalt their national character,
delivered up to his English subjects.
In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage
characteristic of the English people was, by the system of Cromwell, at
once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have maintained orders as
strict. Other leaders have inspired their followers with zeal as ardent.
But in his camp alone the most rigid discipline was found in company
with the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the
precision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of
crusaders. From the time when the army was remodeled to the time when it
was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or on the
Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland,
Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded by
difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only
never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces
whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the
day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most
renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was
startled by the shout of stern exultation with which his English allies
advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a true soldier,
when he learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell’s pikemen to
rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy; and the banished Cavaliers
felt an emotion of national pride, when they saw a brigade of their
countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before
it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain. The military saints
resolved that, in defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the
almost universal sentiment of the realm, the king should expiate his
crimes with blood. In order to accomplish their purpose, it was
necessary that they should first break in pieces every part of the
machinery of government. A revolutionary tribunal was created. That
tribunal pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a
public enemy; and his head was severed from his shoulders before
thousands of spectators in front of the banqueting hall of his own
palace.
King, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been vanquished and destroyed;
and Cromwell seemed to be left the sole heir of the powers of all three.
Yet were certain limitations still imposed on him by the very army to
which he owed his immense authority. That singular body of men was, for
the most part, composed of zealous republicans. In the act of enslaving
their country, they had deceived themselves into the belief that they
were emancipating her. The book which they most venerated furnished them
with a precedent, which was frequently in their mouths. It was true that
the ignorant and ungrateful nation murmured against its deliverers.
Even so had another chosen nation murmured against the leader who
brought it, by painful and dreary paths, from the house of bondage to
the land flowing with milk and honey. Yet had that leader rescued his
brethren in spite of themselves; nor had he shrunk from making terrible
examples of those who contemned the proffered freedom, and pined for the
fleshpots, the taskmasters and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of
the warlike saints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement of a free
and pious commonwealth. For that end they were ready to employ, without
scruple, any means, however violent and lawless. It was not impossible,
therefore, to establish by their aid a dictatorship such as no king had
even exercised: but it was probable that their aid would be at once
withdrawn from a ruler who, even under strict constitutional restraints,
should venture to assume the kingly name and dignity.
The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different. He was not what he had
been; nor would it be just to consider the change which his views had
undergone as the effect merely of selfish ambition. He had, when he came
up to the Long Parliament, brought with him from his rural retreat
little knowledge of books, no experience of great affairs, and a temper
galled by the long tyranny of the government and of the hierarchy. He
had, during the thirteen years which followed, gone through a political
education of no common kind. He had been a chief actor in a succession
of revolutions. He had been long the soul, and at last the head, of a
party. He had commanded armies, won battles, negotiated treaties,
subdued, pacified, and regulated kingdoms. It would have been strange
indeed if his notions had been still the same as in the days when his
mind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion, and when
the greatest events which diversified the course of his life were a
cattle fair or a prayer meeting at Huntingdon. He saw that some schemes
of innovation for which he had once been zealous, whether good or bad
in themselves, were opposed to the general feeling of the country, and
that, if he persevered in those schemes, he had nothing before him but
constant troubles, which must be suppressed by the constant use of the
sword. He therefore wished to restore, in all essentials, that ancient
constitution which the majority of the people had always loved, and for
which they now pined.
The course afterward taken by Monk was not open to Cromwell. The memory
of one terrible day separated the great regicide for ever from the house
of Stuart. What remained was that he should mount the ancient English
throne, and reign according to the ancient English polity. If he could
effect this, he might hope that the wounds of the lacerated state would
heal fast. Great numbers of honest and quiet men would speedily rally
round him. Those Royalists whose attachment was rather to institutions
than to persons, to the kingly office than to King Charles I or King
Charles II, would soon kiss the hand of King Oliver. The peers, who now
remained sullenly at their country houses, and refused to take any part
in public affairs, would, when summoned to their House by the writ of a
king in possession, gladly resume their ancient functions.
Northumberland and Bedford, Manchester and Pembroke, would be proud to
bear the crown and the spurs, the scepter and the globe, before the
restorer of aristocracy. A sentiment of loyalty would gradually bind the
people to the new dynasty; and, on the decease of the founder of that
dynasty, the royal dignity might descend with general acquiescence to
his posterity.
The ablest Royalists were of opinion that these views were correct, and
that, if Cromwell had been permitted to follow his own judgment, the
exiled line would never have been restored. But his plan was directly
opposed to the feelings of the only class which he dared not offend. The
name of king was hateful to the soldiers. Some of them were indeed
unwilling to see the administration in the hands of any single person.
The great majority, however, were disposed to support their general, as
elective first magistrate of a commonwealth, against all factions which
might resist his authority: but they would not consent that he should
assume the regal title, or that the dignity, which was the just reward
of his personal merit, should be declared hereditary in his family. All
that was left to him was to give to the new republic a constitution as
like the constitution of the old monarchy as the army would bear.
Had he been a cruel, licentious, and rapacious prince, the nation might
have found courage in despair, and might have made a convulsive effort
to free itself from military domination. But the grievances which the
country suffered, though such as excited serious discontent, were by no
means such as impel great masses of men to stake their lives, their
fortunes, and the welfare of their families against fearful odds. The
taxation, though heavier than it had been under the Stuarts, was not
heavy when compared with that of the neighboring states and with the
resources of England. Property was secure. Even the Cavalier, who
refrained from giving disturbance to the new settlement, enjoyed in
peace whatever the civil troubles had left him. The laws were violated
only in cases where the safety of the Protector’s person and government
was concerned. Justice was administered between man and man with an
exactness and purity not before known. Under no English government,
since the Reformation, had there been so little religious persecution.
The unfortunate Roman Catholics, indeed, were held to be scarcely within
the pale of Christian charity. But the clergy of the fallen Anglican
Church were suffered to celebrate their worship on condition that they
would abstain from preaching about politics. Even the Jews, whose public
worship had, ever since the thirteenth century, been interdicted, were,
in spite of the strong opposition of jealous traders and fanatical
theologians, permitted to build a synagogue in London.
The Protector’s foreign policy at the same time extorted the ungracious
approbation of those who most detested him. The Cavaliers could scarcely
refrain from wishing that one who had done so much to raise the fame of
the nation had been a legitimate king; and the Republicans were forced
to own that the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country,
and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given her
glory in exchange. After half a century during which England had been of
scarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, she at
once became the most formidable power in the world, dictated terms of
peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of
Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land
and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and acquired on
the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the
loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the
Protestant interest. All the reformed churches scattered over Roman
Catholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Huguenots
of Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets of the Alps, professed a
Protestantism older than that of Augsburg, were secured from oppression
by the mere terror of his great name. The Pope himself was forced to
preach humanity and moderation to popish princes. For a voice which
seldom threatened in vain had declared that, unless favor were shown to
the people of God, the English guns should be heard in the castle of
Saint Angelo. In truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his
own sake and that of his family, so much reason to desire as a general
religious war in Europe. In such a war he must have been the captain of
the Protestant armies. The heart of England would have been with him.
His victories would have been hailed with a unanimous enthusiasm unknown
in the country since the rout of the Armada, and would have effaced the
stain which one act, condemned by the general voice of the nation, has
left on his splendid fame. Unhappily for him he had no opportunity of
displaying his admirable military talents, except against the
inhabitants of the British isles.
While he lived his power stood firm, an object of mingled aversion,
admiration, and dread to his subjects. Few indeed loved his government;
but those who hated it most hated it less than they feared it. Had it
been a worse government, it might perhaps have been overthrown in spite
of all its strength. Had it been a weaker government, it would certainly
have been overthrown in spite of all its merits. But it had moderation
enough to abstain from those oppressions which drive men mad; and it had
a force and energy which none but men driven mad by oppression would
venture to encounter.
It has often been affirmed, but with little reason, that Oliver died at
a time fortunate for his renown, and that, if his life had been
prolonged, it would probably have closed amid disgraces and disasters.
It is certain that he was, to the last, honored by his soldiers, obeyed
by the whole population of the British islands, and dreaded by all
foreign powers; that he was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England
with funeral pomp such as London had never before seen, and that he was
succeeded by his son Richard as quietly as any king had ever been
succeeded by any Prince of Wales.
LORD HALIFAX.
BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.
[George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, one of the most brilliant of
seventeenth century statesmen, born 1630, died 1695. He was a most
important figure in the reigns of Charles II, James II, and of
William III, and amid the dissensions and disturbances of the
period his sanity, moderation, and wisdom did much to assuage the
most dangerous party conflicts. Macaulay’s characterization of him
is among the noted historic portraits.]
Among the statesmen of those times Halifax was, in genius, the first.
His intellect was fertile, subtle, and capacious. His polished,
luminous, and animated eloquence, set off by the silver tones of his
voice, was the delight of the House of Lords. His conversation
overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His political tracts well
deserve to be studied for their literary merit, and fully entitle him to
a place among English classics. To the weight derived from talents so
great and various he united all the influence which belongs to rank and
ample possessions. Yet he was less successful in politics than many who
enjoy smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiarities which
make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the contests of
active life. For he always saw passing events, not in the point of view
in which they commonly appear to one who bears a part in them, but in
the point of view in which, after the lapse of many years, they appear
to the philosophic historian. With such a turn of mind, he could not
long continue to act cordially with any body of men. All the prejudices,
all the exaggerations, of both the great parties in the state moved his
scorn. He despised the mean arts and unreasonable clamors of demagogues.
He despised still more the doctrines of divine right and passive
obedience. He sneered impartially at the bigotry of the Churchman and at
the bigotry of the Puritan.