SESSION OF OLIVER'S SECOND PARLIAMENT.
ANOTHER LETTER FROM MILTON TO MR. RICHARD JONES: DEPARTURE OF LADY
RANELAGH FOR IRELAND: LETTER FROM MILTON TO PETER HEIMBACH: MILTON'S
SECOND MARRIAGE: HIS SECOND WIFE, KATHARINE WOODCOCK: LETTER TO
EMERIC BIGOT: MILTON'S LIBRARY AND THE BYZANTINE HISTORIANS: M.
STOUPE: TEN MORE STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS.
XCI.-C.): MORLAND, MEADOWS, DURIE, LOCKHART, AND OTHER DIPLOMATISTS
OF THE PROTECTOR, BACK IN LONDON: MORE EMBASSIES AND DISPATCHES OVER
LAND AND SEA: MILTON STANDING AND WAITING: HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE
PROTECTORATE GENERALLY.
Not much altogether is recoverable of Milton's life through that
section of the Protectorate which coincides with the first Session of
the Second Parliament (Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657). What is
recoverable will connect itself with (1) Three Private Epistles of
his dated in these nine months, and (2) The series of his
State-letters in the same period. To Richard Jones, _alias_
young Ranelagh, still at Oxford with Oldenburg, Milton, four days
after the meeting of the Parliament, addressed another letter in that
tone of Mentorship which he seems to have thought most suitable for
the youth:--
"To the Noble youth, RICHARD JONES.
"Preparing again and again to reply to your last letter, I was
first prevented, as you know, by some sudden pieces of business, of
such a kind as are apt to be mine; then I heard you were off on an
excursion to some places in your neighbourhood; and now your most
excellent mother, on her way to Ireland--whose departure ought to
be a matter of no ordinary regret to both of us (for to me also she
has stood in the place of all kith and kin: _nam et mihi omnium,
necessitudinum loco fuit_)--carries you this letter herself.
That you feel assured of my affection for you, right and well; and
I would have you feel daily more and more assured of it, the more
of good disposition and of good use of your advantages you give me
to see in you. Which result, by God's grace, I see you not only
engage for personally, but, as if I had provoked you by a wager on
the subject, give solemn pledge and put in bail that you will
accomplish,--not refusing, as it were, to abide judgment, and to
pay the penalty of failure if judgment should be given against you.
I am truly delighted with this so good hope you have of yourself;
which you cannot now be wanting to, without appearing at the same
time not only to have been faithless to your own promises but also
to have run away from your bail. As to what you write to the effect
that you do not dislike Oxford, you adduce nothing to make me
believe that you have got any good there or been made any wiser:
you will have to shew me that by very different proofs. Victories
of Princes, which you extol with praises, and matters of that sort
in which force is of most avail, I would not have you admire too
much, now that you are listening to Philosophers [Robert Boyle and
his set?]. For what should be the great wonder if in the native
land of _wethers_ there are born strong horns, able to
_ram_ down most powerfully cities and towns? [_Quid enim
magnopere mirandum est si vervecum, in patria valida nascantur
cornua quæ urbes et oppida arietare valentissime possint?_
Besides the pun, there is some geographical allusion, or allusion
of military history, which it is difficult to make out.] Learn you,
already from your early age, to weigh and discern great characters
not by force and animal strength, but by justice and temperance.
Farewell; and please to give best salutations in my name to the
highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg, your chamber-fellow.
"Westminster: Sept. 21, 1656."
If the date of this letter, as published by Milton himself, is
correct, it was written on a Sunday. Yet there can have been no
particular haste; for Lady Ranelagh, who was to carry the letter to
her son at Oxford on her way to Ireland, did not leave London for at
least another fortnight. The pass for "Lady Catharine, Viscountess of
Ranelagh, and her two daughters," with their servants, eight horses,
&c., to go into Ireland, was granted, I find, by the Protector's
Council, Oct. 7, 1656, on the motion of Lord President Lawrence.[1]
She was to be away in Ireland for some years, occupied with family
business of various kinds; and Milton was thinking with regret of the
blank in his life that would be caused by her absence. For she had
been to him, he says, "in the place of all kith and kin." How much
that phrase involves! Though we have no letters from Milton to Lady
Ranelagh, or from Lady Ranelagh to Milton, and though the fact of
their friendship has been left by Milton unrecorded in that poetical
form, whether of sonnet or of idyll, which has preserved for us so
finely other incidents and intimacies of his life, this one phrase,
duly interpreted, ought to make up for all. Perhaps in no part of any
eminent man's life, especially if he is bereft domestically, is there
wanting this benefit of some supreme womanly interest wakened in his
behalf. Twice in Milton's life, so unfortunate domestically hitherto,
we have seen something of the kind. Twelve years ago, in the old
Aldersgate days of his desertion by his wife, it seemed to be the
Lady Margaret Ley that was paramount. More recently, through the
Westminster years of blindness and widowerhood, the real ministering
angel, if there had been any such, had been that Lady Ranelagh whom
English History remembers at any rate as the incomparable sister of
Lord Broghill and of Robert Boyle. Let there be restored to her
henceforth the honour also of having been Milton's friend.
[Footnote 1: Council Order-Books of date.]
The next extant Epistle of Milton, written when the Second Parliament
of the Protectorate had sat nearly two months, is also quite of a
private nature. Of the German or Dutch youth to whom it is addressed,
Peter Heimbach, I have ascertained only that he had been residing for
some time in London, perhaps originally brought thither in the train
of some embassy or agency, and that he had recently published in
London a Latin letter of eulogy on Cromwell,[1] extremely
enthusiastic and somewhat juvenile. Milton's letter suggests farther
that he had been much about Milton, as amanuensis or what not, but
was now on a visit to Holland.
[Footnote 1: The Letter, which is in thirty-five pages of small
folio, is entitled "_Petri ab Heimbach, G.F., ad Serenissimum
Potentissimumque Principem Olivarium, D. G. Magnæ Brittaniæ
Protectorem, veræ Fidei Defensorem, Pium, Felicem, Invictum,
Adlocutio Gralulatoria: Londini, Ex Typographia Jacobi
Cottrellii_, 1656." The praise of Cromwell is boundless; and his
conduct in the Piedmontese business, and his care of learning and the
Universities, are especially noticed.]
"To the very accomplished youth, PETER HEIMBACH.
"Most amply, my Heimbach, have you fulfilled your promises and all
the other expectations one would have of your goodness, with the
exception, that I have still to long for your return. You promised
that it would be within two months at farthest; and now, unless my
desire to have you back makes me misreckon the time, you have been
absent nearly three. In the matter of the Atlas you have abundantly
performed all I requested of you; which was not that you should
procure me one, but only that you would find out the lowest price
of the book. You write that they ask 130 florins; it must be the
Mauritanian mountain _Atlas_, I think, and not a book, that
you tell me is to be bought at so huge a price. Such is now the
luxury of Typographers in printing books that the furnishing of a
library seems to have become as costly as the furnishing of a
villa. Since to me at least, on account of my blindness, painted
maps can hardly be of use, vainly surveying as I do with blind eyes
the actual globe of the earth, I am afraid that the bigger the
price at which I should buy that book the greater would seem to be
my grief over my deprivation. Be good enough, pray, to take so much
farther trouble for me as to be able to inform me, when you return,
how many volumes there are in the complete work, and which of the
two issues, that of Blaeu or that of Jansen, is the larger and more
correct. This I hope to hear from yourself personally, on your
speedy return, rather than by another letter. Meanwhile farewell,
and come back to us as soon as you can.
"Westminster: Nov. 8, 1656."
One guesses from this letter that Heimbach was then in Amsterdam. It
was there, at all events, that the two Atlases about which Milton
enquired had been published or were in course of publication. That of
John Jansen, called _Novus Atlas_, when completed in 1658,
consisted of six folio volumes; the yet more magnificent
_Geographia Blaeviana_, or Atlas of the geographer and printer
John Blaeu, was not perfect till 1662, and then consisted of eleven
volumes of very large folio. But various Atlases, or collections of
maps in anticipation of the complete Atlas, had been on sale by Blaeu
for ten or twelve years previously: e.g., from his own
trade-catalogue in 1650, "Atlas, four volumes illuminated, bound
after the best fashion, will cost 150 guldens," and "Belgia Foederata
and Belgia Regia, two vols., white [uncoloured], 70 guldens, or
illuminated 140 guldens." The gulden or Dutch florin was equal to
1_s._ 8_d._ English, so that the price of Blaeu's four
volume Atlas of 1650 was £12 10_s._ To Milton in 1656 the price
of the same, or of whatever other Atlas he had in view, was to be
twenty florins less, i.e. about £11. It was much as if one were asked
to give £38 for a book now; and no wonder that Milton hesitated.[1]
[Footnote 1: The information about the prices of Blaeu's general
Atlas in 1650 and his special Atlas of the two Belgiums in the same
year is from a curious letter in the _Correspondence of the Earls
of Ancram and Lothian_, edited for the Marquis of Lothian, in
1875, by Mr. David Laing (II. 256).]
Just four days after the date of the letter to Heimbach, i.e. on the
12th of November, 1656, there took place an event of no less
consequence to the household in Petty France than Milton's second
marriage, after four years of widowerhood. It was performed, as the
Marriage Act then in force required, not by a clergyman, but by a
justice of the peace, and is registered thus in the books of the
parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, London, under the year 1656: "The
agreement and intention of marriage between JOHN MILTON, Esq., of the
Parish of Margaret's in Westminster, and MRS. KATHARINE WOODCOCKE, of
the Parish of Mary's in Aldermanbury, was published three several
market-days in three several weeks, viz. on Wednesday the 22nd and
Monday the 27th of October, and on Monday the 3rd of November; and,
no exceptions being made against their intention, they were,
according to the Act of Parliament, married the 12th of November by
Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices of Peace
for this City of London."[1] Of this KATHARINE WOODCOCK (the "Mrs."
before whose name does not mean that she had been married before) we
learn farther, from Phillips, that she was "the daughter of Captain
Woodcock of Hackney"; and that is nearly all that we know of her
family. A Captain John Woodcock, who is found giving a receipt for
£13 8_s._ to the Treasurer-at-War on Oct. 6, 1653, on the
disbanding of his troop, may possibly have been her father, as no
other Captain Woodcock of the time has been discovered.[2] There is
reason to believe that Milton had not been acquainted with the lady
before his blindness, and so that, literally, he had never
_seen_ her. Not the less, for the brief space of her life
allotted to their union, she was to be a light and blessing in his
dark household.
[Footnote 1: Given in Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1840; but I owe
my copy to the kindness of Colonel Chester, who took it direct from
the Register of St. Mary, Aldermanbury; and who supplies me with
the following information in connexion with it: "It is generally
said that the marriage took place in that church; but this, I
think, may be doubted. I noticed, in several instances, that, when
the religious ceremony was performed after the civil one, the fact
was recorded; but it is not so in this case. I think that the
City marriages at that period usually took place in the Guildhall,
where a magistrate sat daily; though I believe they were sometimes
solemnized at the residence of one of the parties."]
[Footnote 2: Phillips; Hunter's _Milton Gleanings_, p. 35.
Colonel Chester tells me that, although Katharine Woodcock is
described in the Register as "of the parish of Mary's in
Aldermanbury," he found no trace of her family in that parish at the
time. "There were Woodcocks there at a much earlier period (say 100
years before); but about this time I found only one burial, that of
Michael Woodcock, whose will I have since looked at, but which does
not mention her." The conjecture that Mr. Francis Woodcock, minister
of St. Olave's, Southwark, was a relative, receives no support from
what is known of his principles (see Vol. III, 184). A contemporary
Puritan divine, Thomas Woodcock, for some time minister of St. Andrew
Undershaft, is found living at Hackney after the Restoration.]
The household better ordered; the three young orphan girls of the
first marriage better tended; more of lightsomeness and cheerfulness
for Milton himself among his books; continuance, under new
management, of the little hospitalities to the learned foreigners who
occasionally call, and to the habitual visitors: so, we are to
imagine, pass away at home those winter months of 1656-7 during which
the great topics of interest outside were the war with Spain,
Sindercombe's plot against the Protector's life, the debates in
Parliament over the case of James Nayler, and the proceedings there
for amending the system of the Protectorate, whether by converting it
into Kingship or otherwise. Not, however, till the last day of March
1656-7, or three months and a half after the marriage with Katharine
Woodcock, have we another distinct glimpse of Milton in his private
life. On that day he dictated, in Latin, the following letter:--
"To the most accomplished EMERIC BIGOT.
"That on your coming into England I had the honour of being thought
by you more worth visiting and saluting than others was truly and
naturally gratifying to me; and that now you renew your salutation
by letter, even at such an interval, is somewhat more gratifying
still. For in the first instance you might have come to me perhaps
on the inducement of other people's opinion; but you could hardly
return to me by letter save at the prompting of your own judgment,
or, at least, good will. On this surely I have ground to
congratulate myself. For many have made a figure by their published
writings whose living voice and daily conversation have presented
next to nothing that was not low and common: if, then, I can attain
the distinction of seeming myself equal in mind and manners to any
writings of mine that have been tolerably to the purpose, there
will be the double effect that I shall so have added weight
personally to my writings, and shall receive back by way of
reflection from them credit, how small soever it may be, yet
greater in proportion. For, in that case, whatever is right and
laudable in them, that same I shall seem not more to have derived
from authors of high excellence than to have fetched forth pure and
sincere from the inmost feelings of my own mind and soul. I am
glad, therefore, to know that you are assured of my tranquillity of
spirit in this great affliction of loss of sight, and also of the
pleasure I have in being civil and attentive in the reception of
visitors from abroad. Why, in truth, should I not bear gently the
deprivation of sight, when I may hope that it is not so much lost
as revoked and retracted inwards, for the sharpening rather than
the blunting of my mental edge? Whence it is that I neither think
of books with anger, nor quite intermit the study of them,
grievously though they have mulcted me,--were it only that I am
instructed against such moroseness by the example of King Telephus
of the Mysians, who refused not to be cured in the end by the
weapon that had wounded him. As to that book you possess, _On the
Manner of Holding Parliaments_, I have caused the marked
passages of it to be either amended, or, if they were doubtful,
confirmed, by reference to the MS. in the possession of the
illustrious Lord Bradshaw, and also to the Cotton MS., as you will
see from your little paper returned herewith. In compliance with
your desire to know whether also the autograph of this book is
extant in the Tower of London, I sent one to inquire of the Herald
who has the custody of the Deeds, and with whom I am on familiar
terms. His answer is that no copy of that book is extant among
those records. For the help you offer me in return in procuring
literary material I am very much obliged. I want, of the Byzantine
Historians, _Theophanis Chronographia_ (folio: Greek and
Latin), _Constantini Manassis Breviarium Historicum_, with
_Codini Excerpta de Antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis_
(folio: Greek and Latin), _Anastasii Bibliothecarii Historia et
Vitæ Romanorum Pontificum_ (folio); to which be so good as to
add, from the same press, _Michael Glycas_, and _Joannes
Cinnamus_, the continuator of Anna Comnena, if they are now out.
I do not ask you to get them as cheap as you can, both because
there is no need to put a very frugal man like yourself in mind of
that, and because they tell me the price of these books is fixed
and known to all. MR. STOUPE has undertaken the charge of the money
for you in cash, and also to see about the most convenient mode of
carriage. That you may have all you wish, and all you aspire after,
is my sincere desire. Farewell.
"Westminster: March 24, 1656-7."
Of the French scholar to whom this letter was addressed there is an
excellent notice in Bayle. "EMERIC BIGOT," says Bayle, "one of the
most learned and most honest men of the seventeenth century, was a
native of Rouen, and of a family very distinguished in the legal
profession. He was born in 1626. The love of letters drew him aside
from public employments; his only occupation was in books and the
acquisition of knowledge; he augmented marvellously the library which
had been left him by his father. Once every week there was a meeting
at his house for talk on matters of erudition. He kept up literary
intercourse with a great number of learned men; his advices and
information were useful to many authors; and he laboured all he could
for the good and advantage of the Republic of Letters. He published
but one book [a Life of St. Chrysostom]; but apparently he would have
published others had he lived to complete them. M. Ménage in France,
and Nicolas Heinsius among foreigners, were his two most intimate
friends. He had none of the faults that accompany learning: he was
modest and an enemy to disputes. In general, one may say he was the
best heart in the world. He died at Rouen Dec. 18, 1689, aged about
sixty-four years." How exactly this description of Bigot for his
whole life tallies with the notion we should have of him, at the age
of thirty-two, from Milton's letter! He had been in England some time
ago, it appears, and had there, like other foreigners, paid his
respects to Milton. And now, either from Rouen, or more probably from
Paris, he had reopened the communication, quite in the style of a man
such as Bayle paints him. The immediate object of his letter seems to
have been to ask Milton to have some doubtful passages in a book "On
the Manner of Holding Parliaments" compared with MS. authorities in
London; but he had taken occasion to express also his vivid
recollection of Milton, his interest in Milton's present condition,
and his desire to be of use to him in the quest or purchase of
foreign books.
Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot's immediate
commission,[1] did, it will be observed, send him a commission in
return. It deserves a little explanation:--There was then in course
of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of
Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine
Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers,
Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from
the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our
information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages.
The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six
volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and
Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in
1645. Now, in Milton's library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians
were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the
earlier volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate
prior editions of particular writers. There were some gaps, however,
which he wanted to fill up. He wanted the _Chronographia_ of
Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811;
also the _Brevarium Historicum_ of Constantine Manasses, a
metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also
the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century,
entitled _Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis_; also
that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the _Lives of the Popes_.
The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out
(all in 1655). At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian
editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of _Michael
Glycas_, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to
A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by
_Joannes Cinnamus_, the imperial notary of the 12th century.--As
the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till
1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot
can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine
books. One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned folios in
the neat new tenement which Milton inhabited in Petty France; and it
gives one a stronger idea than we have yet had of Milton's passion
for books, and of his indomitable perseverance and ingenuity in the
use of them in his blind state, that he should have taken such pains,
at our present date, to supply himself with copies of some of the
rare Byzantine Historians. Connecting this purchase, through Bigot,
with the recent inquiry, through Heimbach, about the price of
Blaeu's great Atlas, may we not also discern some increased
attention to the furnishing of the house occasioned by the second
marriage?
[Footnote 1: It seems to me possible, though I would not be too sure,
that the book about which Bigot wrote to Milton was one entitled
_Modus tenendi Parliamentum apud Anglos_, by Henry Elsynge,
Clerk of the House of Lords, and father of the Henry Elsynge who was
Clerk of the Commons In the Long Parliament (Wood, Ath. III. 363-4).
The book, which had been sent forth under Parliamentary authority in
1641, was a standard one; and manuscript copies of it, or drafts for
it, more complete than itself, may well have been extant in such
places as the Cotton Library or Bradshaw's. Actually Elsynge's
autograph of the book, dated 1626, was extant in London at the date
of Milton's letter, though not in the Tower. An edition of the book,
"enriched with a large addition from the author's original MS.," was
published in 1768; and the MS. itself is now in the British Museum
(Bonn's _Lowndes_, Article "Elsynge").]
The Herald in charge of the Records in the Tower, mentioned in
Milton's letter as one of his acquaintances, was, I believe, WILLIAM
RYLEY, Norroy King-at-arms. He had been Clerk of the Records, under
the Master of the Rolls, for some years, and was to continue in the
post till after the Restoration. A more interesting person was the
"MR. STOUPE" who took charge of the cash to Bigot for the Byzantine
volumes, and was to see to their conveyance to London.--He was no
common character. A Grison by birth, he had settled in London as
minister of the French Church in the Savoy; but he had left that post
to be one of Thurloe's travelling-agents and political intelligencers
or spies. For two years or more he had been employed in secret
missions to France and Switzerland, chiefly for negotiation in the
interests of the continental Protestants; and his success in this
kind of employment, often at considerable personal risk, and his
talent for collecting information in London itself by means of
correspondence from abroad, had gradually recommended him to the
Protector. Burnet, who knew him well in after life, when he was more
a frantic Deist than either a Protestant or "Christian," had more
anecdotes about Cromwell from him than from any other man. The
anecdotes he liked best to tell were those in which his own
intriguing ability figured. Thus it was Stoupe, according to his own
account, that knew of Cromwell's design on the Spanish West Indies
before all the rest of the world. One day, late in 1654, having been
called into the Protector's room on business, he had noticed him very
intent upon a map and measuring distances on it. Information being
Stoupe's trade, he contrived to see that the map was one of the Bay
of Mexico, and drew his inference. Accordingly, when the fleet of
Penn and Venables was ready to sail, but nobody knew its destination,
"Stoupe happened to say in a company he believed the design was on
the West Indies. The Spanish Ambassador, hearing that, sent for him
very privately, to ask him upon what ground he said it; and he
offered to lay down £10,000 if he could make any discovery of that.
Stoupe owned to me that he had a great mind to the money, and fancied
he betrayed nothing if he did discover the grounds of these
conjectures, since nothing had been trusted to him; but he expected
greater matters from Cromwell, and said only that in a diversity of
conjectures that seemed to him more probable than any others."
Another of Stoupe's stories to Burnet was even more curious. Having
learnt by a letter from Brussels that a certain refugee had come over
to assassinate Cromwell, and was lodged in King Street, Westminster,
he had hurried to Whitehall, and sent in a note to Cromwell, then in
Council, saying he had something to communicate. Cromwell, supposing
it might be one of Stoupe's ordinary pieces of intelligence, had sent
out Thurloe to him. Though "troubled at this," Stoupe had no option
but to show Thurloe the letter. To his surprise, Thurloe had made
light of the matter, saying that they had rumours of that kind by the
score, and it was not for a great man like the Protector to trouble
himself about them. Stoupe, who had hoped his fortune would be made,
went away "much cast down," to write to Brussels for surer evidence.
He mentioned the matter, however, to Lord Lisle; and so, when Sexby's
or Sindercombe's Plot was discovered a while afterwards, Lisle,
talking of it with the Protector, and not doubting that the Protector
knew all about Stoupe's previous revelation, said _that_ must be
the man Stoupe had spoken of. "Cromwell seemed amazed at this, and
sent for Stoupe, and in great wrath reproached him for his
ingratitude in concealing a matter of such consequence to him. Stoupe
upon this shewed him the letters he had received, and put him in mind
of the note he had sent in to him, which was immediately after he had
the first letter, and that he had sent out Thurloe to him. At that
Cromwell seemed yet more amazed, and sent for Thurloe, to whose face
Stoupe affirmed the matter; nor did he deny any part of it, but only
said that he had many such advertisements sent him, in which till
this time he had never found any truth. Cromwell replied sternly that
he ought to have acquainted _him_ with it, and left _him_
to judge of the importance of it. Thurloe desired to speak in private
with Cromwell. So Stoupe was dismissed, and went away, not doubting
but Thurloe would be disgraced." What was his surprise, however, to
find not only that Thurloe was not disgraced, but that he himself was
thenceforth less in favour? Thurloe, in justifying himself, had told
Cromwell more about Stoupe than he previously knew, and "possessed
Cromwell with such an ill opinion of him that after that he never
treated him with any confidence."[1] If the story is true, Stoupe's
loss of favour dates from Jan. 1656-7, or two months before Milton's
letter to Bigot. It would seem, however, that he was still employed
in some way as one of Thurloe's agents; and hence Milton's use of him
to convey the cash to France.[2] That Milton knew Stoupe would have
been certain without this evidence; but the evidence is
interesting.[3]
[Footnote 1: Burnet's _Hist. of his Own Time_, Book I.]
[Footnote 2: Of the £2000 sent from London to Geneva in June 1655 as
the first instalment of relief for the Piedmontese Protestants
(Cromwell's own subscription) £500 had been sent through Stoupe. See
ante p. 190.]
[Footnote 3: Stoupe might make a good character in any historical
novel of the time of the Protectorate. His career did not end then.
He was to be "a brigadier-general in the French armies," and one
knows not what else, before Burnet made his acquaintance.]
Of the following State-Letters of Milton, all belonging to our
present section of his life, five bear date before his second
marriage, and five after. Those after the marriage come at longer
intervals than those before:--
(XCI.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _Oct._ 1656:--Peace with
Portugal being happily ratified, the Protector is despatching
THOMAS MAYNARD to be his consul in that country. This letter is to
introduce him and bespeak access for him to his Majesty.
(XCII.) TO THE KING OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 1656:--A soldierly
knight, Sir William Vavasour, who has been in England, is now
returning to his military duty under the Swedish King. The
Protector need hardly recommend back to his Majesty a servant so
distinguished, but ventures to do so, and to suggest that he should
be paid his arrears.
(XCIII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _Oct._ 1656:--An English
ship-master, called Thomas Evans, is going to Lisbon to prosecute
his claim for £7000 against the Brazil Company, being damages
sustained by the seizure of his ship, the _Scipio_, six years
before, by the Portuguese Government, while he was in the Company's
service. The Treaty provides for such claims; and, though the
Protector has written before on the subject generally, he cannot
but write specially in this case.
(XCIV.) TO THE SENATE OF HAMBURG, _Oct. 16, 1656:_--Long ago,
in the time of King Charles, two brothers, James and Patrick Hays,
being the lawful heirs of their brother Alexander, who had died
intestate in Hamburg, had obtained a decree in their favour in the
Hamburg Court, assigning them all the said Alexander's property,
except dower for his widow. From that day to this, however, chiefly
by the influence of Albert van Eizen, a man of consequence in
Hamburg, they have been kept out of their rights. They are in
extreme poverty and have applied to the Protector. As he considers
it the first duty of his Protectorate to look after such cases, he
writes this letter. It is to request the Hamburg Senate to see that
the two brothers have the full benefit of the old decision of the
Court. Further delay has been threatened, he hears, in the form of
an appeal to the Chamber of Spires. That such an appeal is illegal
will appear by the signed opinions of English lawyers which he
forwards. "But, if entreaty is of no avail, it will be necessary,
and that by the common right of nations, to resort to measures of
retaliation." His Highness hopes this may be avoided by the
prudence of the Senate.
(XCV.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Nov. 1656:_--No answer has
yet been received to his Highness's former letter, of May 14, on
the subject of the claim of Sir John Dethicke, then Lord Mayor of
London, and his partner William Wakefield, on account of the
capture of a ship of theirs in 1649 by a pirate acting for Charles
Stuart, and the insolent detention of the same by M. L'Estrades,
the French Governor of Dunkirk (see the Letter, ante p. 253).
Perhaps the delay had arisen from the fact that M. L'Estrades was
then away with the army in Flanders; but "now he is living in Paris
itself, or rather fluttering about with impunity in city and court
enriched with the spoils of our people." His Highness now
imperatively demands immediate and strict attention to the matter.
It is one of positive obligation by the Treaty; and the honour and
good faith of His French Majesty are directly concerned.--It is a
curious coincidence that within a day or two of the writing of this
strong letter by Milton in behalf of Sir John Dethicke, that knight
should have solemnised Milton's marriage with Katharine Woodcock.
Nov. 12 was the date of the marriage; and, as Dethicke is spoken of
in this letter as no longer in his Mayoralty, it must have been
written after Lord Mayor's day, i.e. after Nov. 9, 1656.
(XCVI.) TO FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _Dec. 1856:_--This
is another of Cromwell's fervid Protestant letters, very much in
the strain of those four months before to the States-General of the
United Provinces and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, and indeed, with
identical expressions. First he acknowledges letters from his
Danish Majesty, of date Feb. 16, received through the worthy Simon
de Pitkum, his Majesty's agent. They have been so gratifying, and
the matter of them is so important, that his Highness has been
looking about for a suitable person to be sent as confidential
minister to Copenhagen. Such a person he hopes to send soon:
meanwhile a letter may convey some thoughts about the state of
Europe that are much occupying his Highness. The dissensions among
Protestant States are causing him profound grief. Especially he is
grieved by the jealousies and misunderstandings that separate two
such important Protestant States as Denmark and Sweden. Can they
not be removed? Sweden and the United Provinces, with both of which
his Highness had taken the liberty of remonstrating to the same
effect, have been coming to a happy accommodation: why should
Denmark keep aloof? Let his Danish Majesty lay this to heart. Let
him think of the persecutions of Protestants in Piedmont, in
Austria, and in Switzerland; and let him imagine the eternal
machinations of the Spaniard behind all. These surely are
inducements sufficient to a reconciliation with Sweden, if it can
be brought about. The Protector's good offices towards that end
shall not be wanting if required. He has the highest esteem for the
King of Denmark, and would cultivate yet closer alliance with
him.--Relating to this letter is a minute of Council of the date
Tuesday, Dec. 2: "The draft of a letter from his Highness to the
King of Denmark was this day read, and after read by parts; and the
several clauses thereof, being put to the question, were, with some
amendments, agreed; and, the whole being so passed, it was offered
to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will
please to send the same." The letter, therefore, was deemed
important. Was the draft read in English or in Latin? On the first
supposition it may still have come from Milton, though it had to go
back to him.
(XCVII.) To WILLIAM, LANDGRAVE OF HESSE, _March
1656-7_:--After an apology to the Landgrave for not having
sooner answered a letter of his received nearly twelve months ago,
the Protector here also plunges into the subject of Union among
Protestants. He is glad that the Landgrave appreciates the
exertions in this behalf that have been made in Britain and
elsewhere. "We have particularly desired the same peace for the
Churches of all Germany, where dissension has been too sharp and of
too long continuance; and through our DURIE, labouring at the same
fruitlessly now for many years, we have heartily offered any
possible service of ours that might contribute thereto. We remain
still in the same mind; we desire to see the same brotherly love to
each other among those Churches: but how hard a business this is of
settling a peace among those sons of peace, as they pretend
themselves, we understand, to our great grief, only too abundantly.
For it is hardly to be hoped that those of the Reformed and those
of the Augustan confession will ever coalesce into the communion of
one Church; they cannot without force be prevented from severally,
by word and writings, defending their own beliefs; and force cannot
consist with ecclesiastical tranquillity. This, at least, however,
they might allow one to entreat--that, as they do differ, they
would differ more humanely and moderately, and love each other
nevertheless." It is a great pleasure to the Protector to exchange
sentiments on this subject with a Prince of such distinguished
Protestant ancestry.
(XCVIII.) TO THE DUKE OF COURLAND, _March 1657_:--After
thanking this potentate of the Baltic for his hospitality, some
time ago, to an English agent passing through to Muscovy, the
Protector brings to his notice the case of one John Jamesone, a
Scotchman, master of one of the Duke's ships. The ship had been
wrecked going into port, but not by Jamesone's fault. The pilot, to
whom he had intrusted it, according to rule and custom, had been
alone to blame. Jamesone has been a faithful servant of the Duke
for seven years; he is in great distress; and his Highness hopes
the Duke will not stop his pay.
(XCIX.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF DANTZIG, _April
1657_:--The Dantzigers, for whom the Protector has a great
respect, have unfortunately sided with the Poles against the King
of Sweden. Would that, for the sake of Religion, and in the spirit
of their old commercial amity with England, they had chosen
otherwise, or would yet change their views! That, however, is
rather beyond the immediate business of this letter; which is to
request them either to release the noble Swede, Count Konigsmarck,
who has become their prisoner by treachery, or at least make his
captivity easier.
(C.) TO THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, _April 1657_:--On the throne of
this vast, chaotic, semi-Asiatic Empire at this time was Alexis,
the son and successor of Michael Romanoff, the founder of that new
dynasty under which Russia was to enter on her era of greatness. He
had come to the throne, as a young man, in 1645, and had since
then, in the despotic Czarish way, continued his father's policy
for the civilization of his subjects by cultivating commerce with
the neighbouring European states, and bringing in foreigners for
service in his armies or otherwise. On the execution of Charles I.,
however, he had broken utterly with the Regicide Island, and had
ordered out of his dominions all English adherents of the
Parliament. He alone of European Sovereigns had at once taken this
high stand against the English Republic. But events, Russian
interests, and communications from the Protector, had gradually
brought him round. Since 1654, when a certain WILLIAM PRIDEAUX had
been sent to Russia as agent for the Protector, the trade with
Russia, through Archangel, had resumed its former dimensions, under
rules permitting English merchants to sell and buy goods at
Archangel, and have a factory there, but "not to go up in the
country for Moscow or any other city in Russia."[1] The envoy
himself, however, had visited Moscow; and his long letters thence,
or from Archangel, had thrown much light on the internal condition
of that strange outlandish Muscovy, as Russia was then generally
called, about which there had been hitherto more of curiosity than
knowledge. The immense wealth of the Emperor, his vast military
forces, the barbaric splendours of his Court, the Oriental
submissiveness of the people and their oddities of dress and
manners, the peculiarities of the Greek Religion, the great
resources of Russia, and the obstructions yet existing in the way
of trade with her, had all become topics of English gossip. But, in
fact, Alexis had become a considerable personage in general
European politics. By wars with Poland, and other populations about
him, he had greatly enlarged his territories, adopting new titles
of sovereignty to signify the same; and in the general imbroglio of
North-Eastern Europe, involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the United
Provinces, and even Germany, he had come to be a power whose
movements and embassies commanded attention. It had been resolved,
therefore, by the Protector and his Council to send a more special
envoy to "the Great Duke of Muscovia"; and, on the 12th of March
1656-7, RICHARD BRADSHAW, ESQ., so long Resident for the
Commonwealth at Hamburg, was recommended by the Council to his
Highness as the proper person.[2] The present letter of Milton,
accordingly, is the Letter of Credence which Bradshaw was to take
with him.--The Letter is addressed to his Russian Majesty, as
punctually as possible, by all his chaos of titles, thus: "Oliver,
Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c.,
to the Most Serene and most powerful Prince and Lord, the Emperor
and Great Duke of all Russia, Lord of Volodomeria, Moscow, and
Novgorod, King of Kazan, Astracan, and Siberia, Lord of Vobscow,
Great Duke of Smolensk, Tuerscow, and other places, Lord and Great
Duke of Novograda, and of the lower countries of Czernigow,
Rezanscow, &c., Lord of all the Northern Clime, and also Lord of
Everscow, Cartalinska, and many other lands."[3] After referring to
the old commercial intercourse between Russia and England, the
Protector says he is moved to seek closer communication, with his
most august Imperial Majesty by that extraordinary worth, far
outshining that of all his ancestors, by which he has won himself
so good an opinion among all neighbouring Princes, Then he
introduces and highly recommends BRADSHAW, who will duly reveal his
instructions.
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, II. 562.]
[Footnote 2: Council Order Book of date.]
[Footnote 3: Compare this address with that which the Envoy of the
United Provinces was instructed by the States-General to be most
punctual in using in his addresses to his Czarish Majesty nearly six
years before (Aug. 1651: see Thurloe, I. 196):--"Most illustrious,
most potent great Lord, Czar and Grand Duke Alexey Michaelowitz,
Autocrator of all both the Greater and Lesser Russia, Czar of Kiof,
Wolodomiria, Novgorod, Czar of Kazan, Czar of Astracan, Czar of
Siberia, Lord of Plescow, and Grand Duke of Smolensko, Tweer,
Jugonia, Permia, Weatka, Bolgaria, Lord and Grand-Duke of Novagrada
and the low lands of Zenigow, Resan, Polotzko, Rostof, Yareslav,
Belooseria, Udoria, Obdoria, Condinia, Wietepsky, M'Stitslof, Lord of
all the Northern Lands, Lord of the Land of Iversky, Czar of
Cartalinsky and Grusinsky, and of the Land of Cardadinsky, Prince of
the Circasses and Gorshes, heir of his Father and Grand-father, and
Lord and Sovereign of many other Easterly, Westerly, and Northerly
Lordships and Dominions." Milton, for the Protector, is somewhat more
economical and uses _Rex_ for _Czar_.]
The mission of BRADSHAW to Russia was not the only incident in the
Protector's diplomatic service about this time in which Milton, as
Foreign Secretary Extraordinary, may have felt an interest. MORLAND,
after having been in Switzerland for about a year and a half on the
business that had grown out of his original Piedmontese mission, had
been at length recalled, leaving the Swiss agency, as before, in the
hands of PELL by himself. He had been back in London since Dec. 1656,
had attended the Council several times to give full and formal report
of his proceedings, and had also appeared before the great Committee
for the Collection for the Piedmontese Protestants, and presented his
accounts of the moneys received and expended. All that he had done
met with high approbation; and, by way of reward in kind, it was
voted by the Council, May 5, 1657, that he should have £700 for 'the
charge of paper, printing, and cutting of the maps, for 2000 copies
of his History,' and the whole of the profits of that book. Morland's
_History of the Evangelical Churches of Piemont_, which appeared
in the following year, was therefore a State publication the
copyright of which was made over to the author. More munificent still
was the reward of the services of MEADOWS in Portugal. His special
mission having been successfully accomplished, and ordinary consular
duty in Lisbon having been put into good hands, he too had returned
to London, but only to be designated at once (Feb. 24, 1656-7) for
another mission of importance. This was that mission to the King of
Denmark which Cromwell had promised in his letter to the King of Dec.
1656, but for which a suitable person had not then been found. To
Meadows, fresh from Portugal, the appointment to Denmark was in
itself a high compliment; but there were very substantial
accompaniments. His allowance in his new mission was to be £1000 a
year; a special sum of £400 was voted for the expense of his journey;
and it was ordered that, for his able discharge of his Portuguese
mission, £100 a year should be settled on him and his for ninety-nine
years--a vote partly commuted a few days afterwards (March 19) into a
present money-payment of £1000. For DURIE, who was also now back in
England, and indeed close to Milton in Westminster, after another of
his roving missions, first through Switzerland, and then in other
parts, there was to be no employment so distinguished as that found
for Meadows. It was enough that he should be at hand for any farther
service of propagandism in behalf of his life-long idea of a
Pan-Protestant Union. Of two new diplomatic appointments that were
soon to be made, both above Durie's mark, we shall hear in time. The
most splendid diplomatic appointment of all in the Protector's
service had, as we already know (ante p. 114), just received an
increase of dignity. The Scottish COLONEL WILLIAM LOCKHART, the
husband of Cromwell's niece, and his Ambassador at the Court of
France since April 1656, had been back on a visit in the end of the
year to attend Parliament and to consult with Cromwell; and now,
knighted by Cromwell, he had returned to France as SIR WILLIAM
LOCKHART, with his great allowance of £100 a week, or £5200 a
year.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates Jan. 1, 27, Feb. 3, 24,
March 5, 12, 19, 1656-7, and May 5, 1657; Letter of Durie, dated
"Westminster, May 28, 1657," in Vaughan's Protectorate (II. 173).]
At no time, indeed, since the beginning of the Protectorate, had
there been such activity in that foreign and diplomatic department of
the Protector's service to which Milton belonged. Cromwell's alliance
offensive and defensive with France against Spain (March 23, 1656-7),
leading immediately to the transport of an English auxiliary army
under General Reynolds to co-operate with the French in Flanders
(ante pp. 140-141), would in itself have caused an increase of such
activity; but, in addition to this, and inextricably involved with
this in Cromwell's general Anti-Spanish policy, was that idea of a
League or Union of the Protestant States of Europe which had first
perhaps been roused in his mind by the Piedmontese massacre of 1655,
but had gradually, as so many of Milton's subsequent State-Letters
prove, assumed firmer form and wider dimensions. The Dutch, the
Protestant Swiss, the Protestant German princes and cities, the
Danes, the Swedes, the Protestants of Transylvania and other eastern
parts, perhaps even the Russians, all, so far as Cromwell's influence
could go, were to be brought to a common understanding for the
promotion of Protestant interests throughout the world and the
defiance of all to the contrary. It was Durie's old dream of
Pan-Protestantism redreamt by a man whose state was kingly, and who
had the means of turning his dreams into realities. Now,
consequently, in the service of that dream, as in his service
generally,
"Thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest."
While so many were thus coming and going, at £800 a year, £1000 a
year, or £5000 a year, blind Milton, with his £200 a year, could only
"stand and wait," the stationary Latin drudge. The return of his old
assistant Meadows from Portugal may again have relieved him of
somewhat of the drudgery; for, though Meadows was designated for the
new mission to Denmark Feb. 24, 1656-7, he did not actually set out
for Denmark till the following August, and there is something like
proof that in the interval, envoy though he now was, he resumed
secretarial duty at Whitehall under Thurloe. His renewed presence in
London may account for the comparative rarity of Milton's
State-Letters from Dec. 1656 to April 1657, and also for the fact
that then there follows a total blank of four months in the series,
bringing us precisely to August, when Meadows was preparing to go
away again. What passed during these months we already know. The
great question of Kingship or continued Protectorship, which had been
in suspense during those months of March and April in which Milton
had written his last four letters, had been brought to a close May 8,
when Cromwell at last decisively refused the Crown; and the First
Session of his Second Parliament had accordingly ended, June 26, not
in his coronation, as had been expected, but in his inauguration in
that Second Protectorship the constitution of which had been framed
by the Parliament in their so-called _Petition and
Advice_.--What may have been Milton's thoughts on the Kingship
question we can pretty easily conjecture. Almost to a certainty, he
was one of the private "_Contrariants_," one of those Oliverians
who, with Lambert, Fleetwood, and most of the Army-men, objected
theoretically to a return to Kingship, feared it would be fatal, and
were glad therefore when Cromwell declined it and accepted the
constitutionalized Protectorship instead. But, indeed, by this time,
it is possible that Milton, though still Oliverian in the main, still
a believer in Cromwell's greatness and goodness, was not so devotedly
an Oliverian as he had been when he had written his panegyric on the
Protector and the Protectorate in his _Defensio Secunda_. Even
then he had made his reserves, and had ventured to express them in
advices and cautions to Cromwell himself. He can hardly have
professed that in those virtues of the avoidance of arbitrariness and
self-will, the avoidance of over-legislation and over-restriction,
which he had especially recommended to Cromwell, the rule of the
Protector through the last three years had quite satisfied his ideal.
Many of the so-called "arbitrary" measures, and even the temporary
device of the Major-Generalships, he may have excused, as Cromwell
himself did, on the plea of absolute necessity; all the measures
distinctly for repression of Royalist risings and conspiracies must
have had his thorough approbation; and, in the great matter of
liberty of speculation and speech, Cromwell had certainly shown more
sympathy with the spirit of Milton's _Areopagitica_ than most of
his Councillors or either of his Parliaments. Nor, as we have
sufficiently seen, did Milton's notions of Public Liberty, any more
than Cromwell's, formulate themselves in mere ordinary
constitutionalism, or the doctrine of the rightful supremacy of
Parliaments elected by a wide or universal suffrage, and a demand
that such should be sitting always. He had more faith perhaps, as
Cromwell had, in a good, broad, and pretty permanent Council, acting
on liberal principles, and led by some single mind. But there
_had_ been disappointments. What, for example, of the frequent
questionings and arrests of Bradshaw, Vane, and other high-minded
Republicans whom Milton admired, and what especially of the prolonged
disgrace and imprisonment of his dear friend Overton? Or, even if the
plea of necessity or supposed necessity should cover such cases too
(for Cromwell's informations through Thurloe might reach farther than
the public knew, and the good Overton, at all events, had gone into
devious and dangerous courses), what about the Protector's grand
infatuation on the subject of an Established Church? He had preserved
the abomination of a State-paid ministry; he had made that
institution the very pride of his Protectorate; he was actually
fattening up over again a miscellaneous State-clergy, in place of the
old Anglicans, by studied encouragements and augmentations of
stipend. So Milton thought, and very much in that language; and here,
above all, must have been his dissatisfaction with Cromwell's
Government. But what could be done? What other Government could there
be? What would the Commonwealth have been without Cromwell, and in
what condition would it be if he were removed? On the whole, what
could a blind private thinker do but, in his occasional interviews
with the great Protector on business, or his rarer presences perhaps
in a retired place at one of the Protector's musical entertainments
at Whitehall, keep all such thoughts to himself, reserving frank
expression of them for his intimates, and meanwhile behaving as a
loyal Oliverian and performing his duty? In such a state of mind, as
I believe, did Milton pass from the First Protectorate into the
Second.
BOOK II.
JUNE 1657-SEPTEMBER 1658.
HISTORY:--OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE.
BIOGRAPHY:-MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND
PROTECTORATE.
CHAPTER I.
OLIVER'S SECOND PROTECTORATE: JUNE 26, 1657--SEPT. 3, 1658.
REGAL FORMS AND CEREMONIAL OF THE SECOND PROTECTORATE: THE
PROTECTOR'S FAMILY: THE PRIVY COUNCIL: RETIREMENT OF LAMBERT: DEATH
OF ADMIRAL BLAKE: THE FRENCH ALLIANCE AND SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS:
SIEGE AND CAPTURE OF MARDIKE: OTHER FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE
PROTECTORATE: SPECIAL ENVOYS TO DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND THE UNITED
PROVINCES: AIMS OF CROMWELL'S DIPLOMACY IN NORTHERN AND EASTERN
EUROPE: PROGRESS OF HIS ENGLISH CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT: CONTROVERSY
BETWEEN JOHN GOODWIN AND MARCHAMONT NEEDHAM: THE PROTECTOR AND THE
QUAKERS: DEATH OF JOHN LILBURNE: DEATH OF SEXBY: MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE
OF BUCKINGHAM TO MARY FAIRFAX: MARRIAGES OF CROMWELL'S TWO YOUNGEST
DAUGHTERS: PREPARATIONS FOR ANOTHER SESSION OF THE PARLIAMENT: WRITS
FOR THE OTHER HOUSE: LIST OF CROMWELL'S PEERS.--REASSEMBLING OF THE
PARLIAMENT, JAN. 20, 1657-8: CROMWELL'S OPENING SPEECH, WITH THE
SUPPLEMENT BY FIENNES: ANTI-OLIVERIAN SPIRIT OF THE COMMONS: THEIR
OPPOSITION TO THE OTHER HOUSE: CROMWELL'S SPEECH OF REMONSTRANCE:
PERSEVERANCE OF THE COMMONS IN THEIR OPPOSITION: CROMWELL'S LAST
SPEECH AND DISSOLUTION OF THE PARLIAMENT, FEB. 4, 1657-8.--STATE OF
THE GOVERNMENT AFTER THE DISSOLUTION: THE DANGERS, AND CROMWELL'S
DEALINGS WITH THEM: HIS LIGHT DEALINGS WITH THE DISAFFECTED
COMMONWEALTH'S MEN: THREATENED SPANISH INVASION FROM FLANDERS, AND
RAMIFICATIONS OF THE ROYALIST CONSPIRACY AT HOME: ARRESTS OF
ROYALISTS. AND EXECUTION OF SLINGSBY AND HEWIT: THE CONSPIRACY
CRUSHED: DEATH OF ROBERT RICH: THE EARL OF WARWICK'S LETTER TO
CROMWELL, AND HIS DEATH: MORE SUCCESSES IN FLANDERS: SIEGE AND
CAPTURE OF DUNKIRK: SPLENDID EXCHANGES OF COMPLIMENTS BETWEEN
CROMWELL AND LOUIS XIV.: NEW INTERFERENCE IN BEHALF OF THE
PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND PROJECT OF A PROTESTANT COUNCIL _DE
PROPAGANDA FIDE_; PROSPECTS OF THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT: DESIRE OF
THE INDEPENDENTS FOR A CONFESSION OF FAITH: ATTENDANT DIFFICULTIES:
CROMWELL'S POLICY IN THE AFFAIRS OF THE SCOTTISH KIRK: HIS DESIGN FOR
THE EVANGELIZATION AND CIVILIZATION OF THE HIGHLANDS: HIS GRANTS TO
THE UNIVERSITIES OF EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW; HIS COUNCIL IN SCOTLAND:
MONK AT DALKEITH: CROMWELL'S INTENTIONS IN THE CASES OF BIDDLE AND
JAMES NAYLER; PROPOSED NEW ACT FOR RESTRICTION OF THE PRESS: FIRMNESS
AND GRANDEUR OF THE PROTECTORATE IN JULY 1658: CROMWELL'S BARONETCIES
AND KNIGHTHOODS: WILLINGNESS TO CALL ANOTHER PARLIAMENT: DEATH OF
LADY CLAYPOLE: CROMWELL'S ILLNESS AND LAST DAYS, WITH THE LAST ACTS
AND INCIDENTS OF HIS PROTECTORSHIP.
Whether Cromwell's Second and Constitutionalized Protectorship was as
agreeable to himself as his First had been may be doubted. He had
accepted it, however, and meant to try it in all good faith. If, on
the one hand, it was more limited, on the other it was attended with
more of grandeur and dignity. Inasmuch as the actual Kingship had
been offered him, and the new constitution was exactly that which
would have gone with the Kingship, his Protectorship now, in the eyes
of all the world, was equivalent to Kingship. When inducted into his
First Protectorship, stately though the ceremonial had been, he had
worn but a black velvet suit, with a gold band round his hat, and
the chief symbol of his investiture had been the removal of his own
military sword and substitution of the civil sword presented to him
by Lambert. He had come into this Second Protectorship robed in
purple, and holding a sceptre of massy gold. In heraldry, as well as
in reality, he had taken his place among the Sovereigns of Europe.
Round about Cromwell, even through the First Protectorate, there had
been, as we have abundantly seen, much of the splendour and equipage
of sovereignty. The phrases "His Highness's Court" and "His
Highness's Household" had become quite familiar. On all public
occasions he was attended and addressed most ceremoniously; when he
rode out in state it was with life-guards about him, outriders in
front, and coaches following; and the Order-Books of the Council
prove that his relations to the Council were regulated by careful
etiquette, and that his personal attendance at any of their meetings
was regarded as a distinction. One observes also, as with Cromwell's
approval, and in evidence of the conservatism that had been growing
upon himself, a retention or even multiplication of aristocratic
forms in his court and government. He had conferred knighthoods less
sparingly than at first, though still rather sparingly;[1] in
mentions of any of the old nobility, whether those that had become
Oliverian and were to be seen at Whitehall, or those who lived in
retirement, their old titles were scrupulously preserved,--e.g. "The
Marquis of Hertford," "The Earl of Warwick," "The Earl of Mulgrave,"
"The Lord Viscount Lisle," "The Right Honourable the Lord Broghill";
and not only were official or courtesy titles still recognised, as by
calling Fleetwood "My Lord Deputy," Whitlocke "Lord Commissioner
Whitelocke," Fiennes "Lord Commissioner Fiennes," and Lawrence "Lord
President Lawrence," but there had been a curious extension of usage
in this last particular. The Protector's sons had become respectively
"The Lord Richard Cromwell" and "The Lord Henry Cromwell" in the
newspapers and in public correspondence; and, for some reason or
other, probably on account of places held in his Highness's Household
or Ministry apart from the Council, at least two of the Councillors
had of late received similar courtesy-promotion. From the beginning
of 1655 Lambert had ceased to be called "Major-General Lambert," and
had become "Lord Lambert," and from the beginning of 1656 "Mr.
Strickland" had passed into "Lord Strickland." They are so named both
in the Council Order-Books and in the Journals of the First Session
of the Second Parliament.
[Footnote 1: Here is a list of Cromwell's Knights of the First
Protectorate, so far as I have ascertained them:--Lord Mayor Thomas
Viner (Feb. 8, 1653-4); John Copleston (June 1, 1655); Colonel John
Reynolds (June 11, 1655); Lord Mayor Sir Christopher Pack (Sept. 20,
1655); Colonel Thomas Pride, of 'Pride's Purge' celebrity (Jan. 17,
1655-6); Major-General John Barkstead, Lieutenant of the Tower (Jan.
19, 1655-6); M. Coyet, of the Swedish Embassy (April 15, 1656);
Richard Combe (Aug. 1656); Lord Mayor Dethicke and George Fleetwood,
Esq. of Bucks (both Sept. 15, 1656); Ambassador Lockhart, Lord Mayor
Robert Tichbourne, Sheriff James Calthorpe, and Lislebone Long, Esq.,
Recorder of London (all Dec. 10, 1656); Colonel James Whitlocke, a
son of Bulstrode Whitlocke (Jan. 6, 1656-7); Thomas Dickson, of York
(March 3, 1656-7); Richard Stayner (June 11, 1657).]
If there had been so much of sovereign and aristocratic form in the
First Protectorate, there was a natural increase of such in the
Second. In the first place, the family of the Protector now lived in
the reflection of that dignity of the purple which had been formally
thrown round himself. The Protector's very aged Mother having died in
honour and peace at Whitehall, Nov. 16, 1654, blessing him with her
last words[1], the family, in the Second Protectorate, was as
follows:--
[Footnote 1: At "ninety-four years of age" according to a letter of
Thurloe's the day after her death (Thurloe to Pell, Nov. 17, 1654, in
Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 79-81); but Colonel Chester
(_Westminster Abbey Registers, 521, Note_) sees reason for
believing she had been baptized at Ely, Oct. 28, 1565, and was
therefore only in her ninetieth year at her death.]
HIS HIGHNESS, OLIVER, LORD PROTECTOR: _ætat. 58._
HER HIGHNESS, ELIZABETH, LADY PROTECTRESS.
Children and Children-in-Law.
1. THE LADY BRIDGET: _ætat. 33_: Ireton's widow, married to
Fleetwood since 1652. FLEETWOOD, though he had been recalled from
Ireland in the middle of 1655, and had been in London since then,
retained his nominal Lord-Deputyship till Nov. 1657.
2. THE LORD RICHARD CROMWELL: _ætat._ 31: married since 1649
to DOROTHY MAYOR, daughter of Richard Mayor, Esq., of Hursley,
Hants, who had been member for Hants in the Long Parliament, a
fellow-Colonel with Cromwell in the Civil War, and afterwards in
some of the Councils of the Commonwealth, in the Little Parliament,
and in the Council of the Protectorate.--Though Lord Richard's
tastes were all for a quiet country-life, with "hawking, hunting,
and horse-racing," he had been in both the Parliaments of the
Protectorate, and had taken some little part in the Second. His
father now brought him more forward. On the 3rd of July, 1657, when
the Second Protectorate was but a week old, the Lord Protector
resigned his Chancellorship of the University of Oxford; and on the
18th Lord Richard was elected in his stead. He was installed at
Whitehall, July 29. He was also made a Colonel, and at length he
was brought into the Council. The fact is thus minuted in the
Council's Books under date Dec. 31, 1657:--"The Lord Richard
Cromwell did this day take the oath of a Councillor, the same being
administered unto him by the Earl of Mulgrave and General
Desborough, in virtue of his Highness's Commission under the Great
Seal." He was immediately put on all Committees of the Council; and
generally after that, when he did attend, his name was put next
after the President's in the _sederunt_.
3. THE LORD HENRY CROMWELL: _ætat. 29_: in the Army since his
boyhood; Colonel since 1649; Major-General and chief Commander in
Ireland since the middle of 1655. At the beginning of the Second
Protectorate he was still in the Government of Ireland with his
military title only; but on the 24th of November 1657 he was sworn
into the full Lord Deputyship in succession to Fleetwood. He had
been married since 1653 to a daughter of Sir Francis Russell, of
Chippenham, Cambridgeshire.
4. THE LADY ELIZABETH: _ætat. 28_: married in her seventeenth
year to JOHN CLAYPOLE, ESQ., of a Northamptonshire family. He had
been made the Lord Protector's "Master of Horse," and had therefore
been known for some time by the courtesy-title of "Lord Claypole."
He had been in the Second Parliament of the Protectorate; and, as
Master of Horse, had figured prominently in the ceremonial of the
late Installation. Lord and Lady Claypole were established in the
household of the Lord Protector, at Whitehall, or at Hampton Court;
and Lady Claypole was a very favourite daughter.
5. THE LADY MARY: _ætat. 21_. She was unmarried when the
Second Protectorate began, though Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper is said
to have sought her hand, and to have turned against the Protector
on being refused it; but on the 18th of November 1657 she became
the second wife of THOMAS BELLASIS, VISCOUNT FALCONBRIBGE, one of
the old nobility. He was about thirty years of age, had been
abroad, had been sounded by Lockhart in Paris as to his
inclinations to the Protectorate, had given every satisfaction in
that matter, and had been certified by Lockhart to the Protector as
"a person of extraordinary parts." On his own account, and also
because he was of an old Royalist family, his marriage with Lady
Mary was thought an excellent match.
6. THE LADY FRANCES: _ætat. 19_. This, the youngest of
Cromwell's children, was also unmarried at the beginning of the
Second Protectorate. The fond dream of the wealthy old
Gloucestershire squire, Mr. John Dutton, that his nephew and
Cromwell's ward, Mr. William Dutton, Andrew Marvell's pupil at Eton
with the Oxenbridges, might become the husband of the Lady Frances,
as had been arranged between him and Cromwell (vol. IV. pp.
616-619), had not been fulfilled; and, the old squire himself being
now dead, young Dutton was left to find another wife for himself in
due time.[1] For the Lady Frances, his Highness's youngest
daughter, there might well be greater destinies. There had been
vague whispers, indeed, of a suggestion in certain quarters that
Charles II. himself should propose for her and negotiate for a
restoration, or a succession to Cromwell, accordingly; but for more
than a year there had been more authentic talk of her marriage with
Mr. ROBERT RICH, the only son of Lord Rich, and grandson and (after
his father) heir-apparent of the Earl of Warwick. That this great
and popular old Parliamentarian and Presbyterian Earl had been won
round at last to the Protectorate, and that he had graced the late
Installation conspicuonsly by his presence, were no unimportant
facts; and the projected family-alliance was by no means
indifferent to Cromwell. There were difficulties, not on the part
of the young people; but at length, Nov. 11, 1657, just a week
before the marriage of the elder sister to Lord Falconbridge, Lady
Frances did become the wife of Mr. Rich. In the fourth month of the
marriage, however. Feb. 16, 1657-8, the husband died, leaving the
Lady Frances, not yet twenty years of age, a widow. She married
again, and did not die till Jan. 1720-1.
[Footnote 1: The will of John Dutton, Esq., of Sherborne,
Gloucestershire, was proved June 30, 1657, just four days after the
beginning of the Second Protectorate; and young Mr. William Dutton
married a widow eventually--"Mary, daughter of John, Viscount
Scudamore, and relict of Thomas Russell of Worcestershire, Esq."
(Noble's Cromwell, I, pp 153-154).]
OTHER RELATIVES
Worth noting among the Relatives of Cromwell alive in the Second
Protectorate, were the following;--(1) The Protector's eldest
surviving sister, ELIZABETH CROMWELL, _ætat. 64_, living at Ely,
unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She
lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, _ætat._ 61,
first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and
afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for
Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the
first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time
in Ireland as one of Fleetwood's Council, and was now a member of the
Protector's Second Parliament. (3) The Protector's youngest sister
ROBINA, formerly the wife of a Peter French, D.D., but now the wife
of DR. JOHN WILKINS, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. Wilkins held
the Wardenship by dispensation from Cromwell, his marriage in the
office being against Statute. The only child of Mrs. Wilkins, by her
first marriage, became afterwards the wife of Archbishop Tillotson.
(4) The Protector's niece, ROBINA, daughter of his deceased sister
Mrs. Anna Sewster, and now wife of SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART. (5) The
Protector's brother-in-law COLONEL VALENTINE WALTON, who had been
member for Huntingdonshire in the Long Parliament, one of the
Regicides, and a member of all the Councils of the Commonwealth; His
first wife; Oliver's sister Margaret, being dead, he had married a
second, and had for some time been less active politically and less
Oliverian. (6) The Protector's brother-in-law JOHN DESBOROUGH, known
as an officer of horse through the Civil Wars, and latterly as one of
Cromwell's stoutest adherents through his Interim Dictatorship and
Protectorate, a member of both his Parliaments, one of his
Councillors, and one of his Major-Generals, though opposed to the
Kingship. He was now a widower by the recent death of his wife,
Cromwell's sister Jane. (7) The Protector's cousin, or father's
sister's son, EDWARD WHALLEY, Colonel in the Civil Wars, one of the
Regicides, and latterly member of both Parliaments of the
Protectorate and one of the Major-Generals. (8) The Protector's aunt,
or father's sister, Mrs. ELIZABETH HAMPDEN, mother of the famous
Hampden, and now a very aged widow, living about Whitehall, with
another son alive, besides grandchildren by her famous dead son, the
eldest of whom, Richard Hampden, was a member of the present
Parliament. (9) The Protector's cousin's son, COLONEL RICHARD
INGOLDSBY, a Recruiter in the Long Parliament, one of the signers of
Charles's death-warrant, and one of the members for Buckinghamshire
in both Parliaments of the Protectorate. More distant kindred of the
Protector were the DUNCHES of Berkshire, and the MASHAMS of Essex,
the head of whom, Sir William Masham, Bart., had been member for that
county in the Long Parliament, and a member of all the Councils of
the Commonwealth and of the first Parliament of the Protectorate. The
poet WALLER was connected with the Protector by his cousinship with
the Hampdens.[1]
[Footnote 1: Among authorities for the facts in this compilation,
besides Council Order Books, and the whole narrative heretofore, are
Carlyle's three genealogical Notes (I. 16, 20-21, and 54-55), Wood's
Fasti, II. 155-8, various passages in Codwin, and two "Narratives"
in _Harl. Misc_ III. 429-468.]
The Protector's new Privy Council for his Second Protectorate was not
constituted till Monday, July 13, 1657, more than a fortnight after
his installation. Then, his Highness being present, there were sworn
in, according to the new oath of fidelity provided by the _Petition
and Advice_, Lord President Lawrence, General Desborough, Lord
Commissioner Fiennes, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr.
Rous, Lord Deputy Fleetwood, Lord Strickland, and Mr. Secretary
Thurloe. This last took his seat at the board as full Councillor by
special nomination of his Highness. In the course of the next few
meetings there came in Colonel Sydenham, Major-General Skippon, Sir
Gilbert Pickering, and Sir Charles Wolseley, raising the number to
thirteen; which completed the Council for some time, though Colonel
Philip Jones and Admiral Montague afterwards took their seats, and
Lord Richard Cromwell, as we have seen, was added Dec. 31. On
comparing the total list with that of the Council of the First
Protectorate (Vol. IV. p. 545), it will be seen that Cromwell
retained all that were alive of his former Council, except Lambert,
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and Mr. Richard Mayor. Sir Anthony Ashley
Cooper had been a deserter from the former Council as early as Dec.
1654, and had since then been so conspicuous in the opposition that
he had been one of the ninety-three excluded from the House at the
opening of the Second Parliament. Mr. Mayor, Richard Cromwell's
father-in-law, though still nominally in the Council, seems to have
been now in poor health and in retirement. The one extraordinary
omission was that of Lambert. He had taken all but the chief part in
the foundation of the First Protectorate; why was he absent from the
Government of the Second? His Oliverianism, it appears, had
evaporated in the late debates about the Kingship and the new
constitution. Certain it is that he did not present himself at the
first meeting of the new Council, and that, after an interview with
Cromwell in consequence, he surrendered his two regimental
colonelcies, his major-generalship, and £10 a day which he had for
the last, and withdrew into private life. Still called "Lord
Lambert," and with a pension of £2000 a year granted him by Cromwell,
he retired to Wimbledon, where his chief amusement was the
cultivation of tulips.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of July 13, 1657, and thenceforward;
Ludlow, 593-594; Godwin, IV. 446-447.]
The new Council having been constituted, and having begun to hold its
meetings twice or thrice a week, the administration of affairs, home
and foreign, was free to go on, in his Highness's hands and the
Council's, without farther Parliamentary interruption till Jan. 20,
1657-8. Foreign affairs may here have the precedence.
Blake's grand blow at the Spaniard in Santa Cruz Bay was still in all
people's minds, and they were looking for the return of that hero,
recalled as he had been, June 10, either for honourable repose in his
battered and enfeebled state after three years at sea, or for further
employment nearer home in connexion with the French-English alliance
and the Flanders expedition. He was never, alas! to set foot in
England. Off Plymouth, as his fleet was touching the shores, he died,
utterly worn out with scurvy and dropsy, Aug. 7, 1657, aged
fifty-eight. As the news spread, there was great sorrow; and on the
13th of August it was ordered by the Council, "That the Commissioners
for the Admiralty and Navy do forthwith give order for the interment
of General Blake in the Abbey Church at Westminster, and for all
things requisite to be prepared for the funeral of General Blake in
such sort as was done for the funeral of General Deane, and that they
give direction for the preparing of Greenwich House for the reception
of the body of General Blake, in order to his funeral." The body,
having been embalmed, lay at Greenwich till Sept. 4, when it was
brought up the Thames with all funereal pomp, mourning hangings on
the barges and the wherries all the way, and so buried in Henry the
Seventh's chapel, the Council, the great Army officers, the Lord
Mayor and Aldermen, and other dignitaries standing round, while a
multitude thronged outside. It was observed that Lord Lambert had
made a point of being present, as if to signify that the great sailor
and he had always understood each other. How Blake would have farther
comported himself had he lived no one really knows. At sea he had
made it a principle to abstain from party-politics. "When news was
brought him of a metamorphosis in the State at home, he would then
encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, 'tis
not our duty to mind State-affairs, but to keep foreigners from
fooling us." The idea among the ultra-Republicans of using Blake's
popularity to undermine Cromwell had long come to nothing.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, Aug. 13, 1657: Godwin, IV. 420-421;
Wood's Fasti, I. 371.]
Blake gone, the naval hope of England now was Admiral Montague. Since
August 11 he had been cruising up and down the Channel with his fleet
under general orders. The interest of the war with Spain now lay
chiefly in Flanders, where the Protector's army of 6000 foot under
General Reynolds was co-operating with the larger French army of
Louis XIV. commanded by Turenne. Here Cromwell had, again to complain
of Mazarin's wily policy. By the Treaty the great object of the
expedition was to be the reduction of the coast-towns, Gravelines,
Mardike, and Dunkirk; but these sieges had been postponed, and
Turenne had been campaigning in the interior, the English troops
obliged to attend him hither and thither, and complaining much of
their bad accommodation and bad feeding. Mazarin, in fact, was
studying French interests only, A peremptory communication from
Cromwell through Ambassador Lockhart, Aug. 31, changed the state of
matters. "I pray you tell the Cardinal from me," he said, "that I
think, if France desires to maintain its ground, much more to
_get_ ground, upon the Spaniard, the performance., of his Treaty
with us will better do it than anything appears yet to me of any
design he hath." He offered 2000 more men from England, if necessary;
but he added in a postscript, "If indeed the French be so false to us
as that they would not have us have any footing on that side the
water, then I desire ... that all things may be done in order to the
giving us satisfaction, and to the drawing-off of our men. And truly,
Sir, I desire you to take boldness and freedom to yourself in your
dealing with the French on these accounts." The Cardinal at once
succumbed, and the siege of Mardike by land and sea was begun Sept.
21. The place was taken in a few days, and, in terms of the Treaty,
given into the possession of General Reynolds for the English. A
little while afterwards, a large Spanish force under Don John of
Austria, the Duke of York serving in it with four regiments of
English and Irish refugees, attempted a recapture of the place; but,
by the desperate fighting of the garrison and Montague's assisting
fire from his ships, the attempt was foiled. The Protector had thus
obtained at least one place of footing on the Continent; and, with
English valour to assist the military genius of Turenne, there was
prospect, late in 1657, of still more success in the Spanish
Netherlands. Lockhart was again in London for consultation with
Cromwell Oct. 15, and Montague was back Oct. 24, on which day he took
his oath and place in the Council.[1]
[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 306-315 (including two Letters of Cromwell
to Lockhart); Godwin, IV. 543-544; Guizot, II. 379-381;
_Cromwelliana_, 168; Council Order Books, Oct. 24, 1657.]
Various other matters of foreign concern occupied the Protector and
his Council in the first months of the new Protectorate. There is an
order in the Council Books, July 28, 1657, for the despatch of £1000
more to the Piedmontese Protestants, and for certain sums to be paid
to Genevese and other ministers for trouble they had taken in that
matter; and, as late as Nov. 25, there is an order for another
despatch of £1500. There were, indeed, to be farther collections for
the Piedmontese sufferers, and new interposition in their behalf with
the Duke of Savoy. Nay, by this time, the generosity of his Highness
in the Piedmontese business had led to applications from distressed
Protestants in other parts of Europe. Thus, Nov. 4, his Highness
being himself present in the Council, and having communicated "a
petition from the pastors of several churches of the Reformed
Religion in Higher Poland, Bohemia, &c., now scattered abroad through
persecution in those parts, desiring some relief, and also a petition
from Adam Samuel Hartmann and Paul Cyril, delegates from these
exiles, together with a narrative of their condition and sufferings,"
it was ordered that the matter should be referred to the Committee
for the Piedmontese Protestants and preparations made for another
collection of money. All the while, of course, there had been the
more usual and regular diplomatic business between the Protector and
the various agencies of foreign powers in London. One hears
especially of the arrival, Aug. 1657, of a new
Ambassador-Extraordinary from Portugal, Don Francisco de Mello, of
entertainments to him, and of audiences granted to him; also of much
intercourse between his Highness and the Dutch Ambassador Lord
Nieuport, now so long resident in England and so much regarded there.
But the latter half of 1657 is also remarkable for the despatch by
his Highness of three special Envoys of his own to the northern
Protestant Powers. MR. PHILIP MEADOWS, appointed Envoy to Denmark as
long ago as Feb. 24, 1656-7 (ante p. 294), but detained meanwhile in
London, set out on his mission at last, Aug. 31; and at the same time
MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, distinguished for his services in
Ireland, and returned as member for Cork and Youghal to both
Parliaments of the Protectorate, set out as Envoy to his Swedish
Majesty. He had been chosen for the important post Aug. 4. Finally,
on the 18th of December, partly in consequence of the departure of
the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport in the preceding month, for some
temporary stay at home on private affairs, GEORGE DOWNING, ESQ. (ante
pp. 43 and 191) was appointed to follow him in the capacity of
Resident for his Highness in the United Provinces.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates; Whitlocke, IV. 311-313;
and _Cromwelliana_, 168-169.]
The general purport of these three missions of Cromwell in 1657
requires explanation. Not commercial interests merely, but also zeal
for union among the Protestant Powers, had all along moved his
diplomacy; and now the state of things in the north of Europe was so
extraordinary that, on the one hand, the cause of Protestant union
seemed in fatal peril, but, on the other hand, if it could be
retrieved, it might be retrieved perhaps in a definite and
magnificent form. The prime agency in bringing about this state of
things had been the vast energy of the young Swedish King, Charles X.
or Karl-Gustav. Cromwell had by this time contracted an especial
admiration of this prince, and had begun to regard him as a kindred
spirit and the armed champion of Continental Protestantism. To see
him succeed to the last in his Polish enterprise, and then turn
himself against Austria and her Roman Catholic clientage in the
Empire, had come to be Cromwell's desire and the desire in Great
Britain generally. For a time that had seemed probable. In the great
Battle of Warsaw, fought July 28-30, 1656, Charles-Gustavus and his
ally the Elector of Brandenburg routed the Poles disastrously; and,
Ragotski, Prince of Transylvania, also abetting and assisting the
Swede, "_actum jam videbatur de Polonia_" as an old annalist
says: "it seemed then all over with Poland." But a medley of powers,
for diverse reasons and interests, had been combining themselves for
the salvation of Poland, or at least for driving back the Swede to
his own side of the Baltic. Not merely the Austrians and the German
Catholic princes were in this combination, but also the Muscovites or
Russians, and, most unnatural of all, the Danes, with countenance
even from the more distant Dutch. Nay, the prudent Elector of
Brandenburg, hitherto the ally of the Swede, was drawn off from that
alliance. This was done by a treaty, dated Nov. 10, 1656, by which
the Polish King, John Casimir, yielded to the Elector the full
sovereignty of Ducal Prussia or East Prussia, till then held by the
Elector only by a tenure of homage to the Polish Crown. All being
ready, the Danish King, Frederick III., gave the signal by declaring
war against Sweden and invading part of the Swedish territories. When
the news reached Cromwell, which it did Aug. 13, 1657, it affected
him profoundly. He had previously been remonstrating, as we have
seen, both with the Danes and the Dutch, by letters of Milton's
composition (ante pp. 272-3 and 290), trying to avert such an
unseemly Protestant intervention in arrest of the Swedish King's
career. And now, having his two envoys, MEADOWS and JEPHSON, ready
for the emergency, he despatched them at once to the scene of that
new Swedish-Danish war in which what had hitherto been the
Swedish-Polish war was to be at once engulphed. For Karl-Gustav had
turned back out of Poland to deal directly with the Danes, and the
interest was now concentrated on the struggle between these two
powers--the Poles, the German Catholics, the Muscovites, the Elector
of Brandenburg, the Dutch, and other powers, looking on more or less
in sympathy with the Danes, and some of them ready to strike in. To
end the war, if possible, by reconciling Charles X. and Frederick
III, was Cromwell's first object; and, with that aim in view, Jephson
was to attach himself more particularly to Charles X., whatever might
be his war-track, and Meadows more particularly to Frederick III. But
they might cross each other's routes, deal with other States along
these routes, and work into each other's hands. RICHARD BRADSHAW,
likewise, who had been sent as Envoy to the Czar of Muscovy in the
beginning of the year (ante pp. 292-294), would be moving about
usefully on the east of the Baltic. And, if a reconciliation between
Sweden and Denmark should by any means be brought about, what then
should be aimed at but a repair of the rupture between the Elector of
Brandenburg and the Swedish King, so as to save the Elector from the
threatened vengeance of the Swede, and then farther the aggregation
of other Protestant German States, and of the Dutch, round this
nucleus of a Swedish-Danish-Brandenburg alliance, for common action
against Poland, Austria, and German Catholicism? Even the Muscovites,
as of the Greek Church, might be brought in, or at least they might
be rendered neutral. All this was in contemplation, as a tissue of
ideal possibilities, when MEADOWS and JEPHSON were despatched in
August, and the mission of DOWNING four months later to the United
Provinces was partly in the same great interest. It may seem matter
for wonder that a man of Cromwell's practical sagacity, already so
deeply implicated on the Continent by his Flanders enterprise and his
alliance with France, should have had such a passion for farther
interference as thus to insert his hands into the apparently
measureless entanglement in northern and eastern Europe. But, in the
first place, his practical sagacity was not at fault. Precisely that
it should not be an entanglement, but a marshalling of powers in two
sets according to their true religions and political affinities, was
the essence of his aspiration; there were deep tendencies towards
that result; sagacity consisted in perceiving these, and practicality
in promoting them. Cromwell's aspiration in connexion with the
Swedish-Danish war was also, it could be proved, that of other
thoughtful Protestants then contemplating the war and speculating on
its chances. But, in the second place, the business of the French
alliance and the Flanders enterprise was vitally inter-connected with
the so-called entanglement in the north and east. The German Emperor
Ferdinand III. had died in April 1657; the Empire was vacant; Mazarin
had set his heart on obtaining that central European dignity for his
young master, Louis XIV., and was intriguing with the Electors for
the purpose; it was still uncertain whether, when the time came, a
majority of the Electoral College would vote for Louis XIV. or would
retain the Imperial dignity in the House of Austria by choosing the
late Emperor's son Leopold. The future of Germany and of
Protestantism in Germany was concerned deeply in that issue; and,
whatever may have been Cromwell's feelings in the special prospect of
the election of his ally Louis XIV. to the Empire, he was bound to
prefer that to the election of another incarnation of Austrian
Catholicism.[1]
[Footnote 1: Studied from scattered documents in Thurloe and from
those of Milton's State-Letters for Cromwell that appertain to Sweden
and Denmark and the missions of 1657, with help from a very luminous
passage in Baillie's Letters (III. 370-371), and with facts and dates
from the excellent abridged History forming the Supplement to the
_Rationarium Temporum_ of the Jesuit Petavius (edit. 1745, I.
562-564), and from Carlyle's _History of Frederick the Great_,
I. 222-223.]
At home meanwhile things went on smoothly. Cromwell had by this time
brought his Established Church into a condition highly satisfactory
to himself. The machinery of the _Ejectors_ and the
_Triers_ was still in full operation; and, on reports from the
_Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers_, his Highness and
the Council still had the pleasure, from time to time, of ordering
new augmentations of clerical stipends. The Voluntaryism which still
existed in wide diffusion through the English mind had become
comparatively silent; and indeed open reviling of the Established
Church had been made punishable by Article X. of the _Petition and
Advice_. Perhaps the plainest speaker now against the principle of
an Established Church, or at least against the constitution of the
present one, was the veteran John Goodwin of Coleman Street. "_The
Triers (or Tormentors) tried and cast by the Laws of God and Men_"
was the title of a pamphlet of Goodwin's, which had been out since
May 1657, assailing the Commission of Triers. Goodwin was too eminent
a Commonwealth's man, and too fair a controversialist, to be treated
as a mere reviler; and it was left to the Protector's journalist,
Marchamont Needham, to reply through the press. "_The Great Accuser
cast down, or a Public Trial of Mr. John Goodwin of Coleman Street,
London, at the Bar of Religion and Right Reason_," was a pamphlet
by Needham, published July 31. It was dedicated "To His Most Serene
Highness, Oliver, Lord Protector," &c., in such terms as
these:--"Sir, It is a custom in all countries, when any man hath
taken a strange creature, immediately to present it to the Prince:
whereupon I, having taken one of the strangest that (I think) any
part of your Highness's dominions hath these many years produced, do,
with all submissiveness, make bold to present him, bound hand and
foot with his own cords (as I ought to bring him), to your Highness.
He need not be sent to the Tower for his mischievousness: there is no
danger in him now, nor like to be henceforth, as I have handled him."
In a prefixed Epistle to the Reader there is a good deal of
scurrility against Goodwin. He is described as "worse than a common
nuisance." He is taxed also with inconsistency, inasmuch as he had
been one of those who, in Feb. 1651-2, had signed the famous
_Proposals of Certain Ministers to the Committee for the
Propagation of the Gospel_, in which the principle of an
Established Church had been assumed and asserted (ante, IV. 392). In
the body of the pamphlet Needham maintains that principle. "Christ
left no such rules and directions," he says, "nor was it his
intention to leave such, for propagating the Gospel, as exclude the
Magistrate from using his wisdom and endeavours in order thereunto."
He defends the Commission of Triers and the Commission of Ejectors,
and more than once twits Goodwin with having taken up at last the
extreme crotchets of Roger Williams the American. "_A Letter of
Address to the Protector occasioned by Mr. Needham's Reply to Mr.
Goodwin's Book against Triers_" appeared Aug. 25; but we need not
follow the controversy farther. It had come to be Mr. John Goodwin's
fate to be the severest public critic of Cromwell's Established
Church; it had come to be Mr. Marchamont Needham's to be the most
prominent defender of that institution.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thomason Pamphlets, and Catalogue of the same for
dates.]
More likely than such men as John Goodwin to be classed as open
revilers of the Established Church were the Quakers. They were now
very numerous, going about in England, Scotland, Ireland, and
everywhere else, as before, and mingling denunciations of every form
of the existing ministry with their softer and richer teachings. They
were still liable, of course, to varieties of penal treatment,
according to the degrees of their aggressiveness and the moods of the
local authorities; but the disposition at head-quarters was decidedly
towards gentleness with them. Hardly had the new Council of State
been constituted when, Cromwell himself present, three of the most
eminent London physicians, Dr. Wright, Dr. Cox, and Dr. Bates, were
instructed "to visit James Nayler, prisoner in Bridewell, and to
consider of his condition as to the state both of his mind and body
in point of health"; and, from that date (July 16, 1657), his farther
detention seems to have been merely for his cure. George Fox, whose
circuits of preaching took him as far as Edinburgh and the Scottish
Highlands, could never be in London without addressing a pious letter
or two to Cromwell, or even going to see him; and another Quaker,
Edward Burrough, was so drawn to Cromwell that he was continually
penning letters to him and leaving them at Whitehall. During and
after the Kingship question these letters were particularly frequent,
the Quakers being all _Contrariants_ on that point. "O
Protector, who hast tasted of the power of God, which many
generations before thee have not so much since the days of apostasy
from the Apostles, take heed that thou lose not thy power; but keep
Kingship off thy head, which the world would give to thee:" so had
Fox written in one letter, ending, "O Oliver, take heed of undoing
thyself by running into things that will fade, the things of this
world that will change; be subject and obedient to the Lord God."
There was something in all this that really reached Cromwell's heart,
while it amused him; and, though he would begin by bantering Fox at
an interview, sitting on a table and talking in "a light manner," as
Fox himself tells us, he would end with some serious words. Both to
Fox personally, and to the letters from him and other Quakers, his
reply in substance uniformly was that they were good people, and
that, for himself, "all persecution and cruelty was against his
mind." Cromwell was only at the centre, however, and could not
regulate the administration of the law everywhere.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date; and Sewel's _History of
the Quakers_, I. 210-233.]
John Lilburne once more, but now for the last time, and in a totally
new guise! Committed to prison in 1653 by the government of the
Barebones Parliament, acting avowedly not by law but simply "for the
peace of this nation" (ante, IV. 508), he had been first in the
Tower, then in a castle in Jersey, and then in Dover Castle. In this
last confinement, which had been made tolerably easy, a Quaker had
had access to him, with very marked effects. "Here, in Dover Castle,"
Lilburne had written to his wife, Oct. 4, 1655, "through the
loving-kindness of God, I have met with a more clear, plain, and
evident knowledge of God, and myself, and His gracious outgoings to
my soul, than ever I had in all my lifetime, not excepting my
glorying and rejoicing condition under the Bishops." Again, in a
later letter: "I particularly can, and do hereby, witness that I am
already dead or crucified to the very occasions and real grounds of
outward wars, and carnal sword-fightings, and fleshly bustlings and
contests, and that therefore confidently I now believe that I shall
never hereafter be a user of the temporal sword more, nor a joiner
with those that do. And this I do here solemnly declare, not in the
least to avoid persecution, or for any politic ends of my own, or in
the least for the satisfaction of the fleshly wills of any of my
great adversaries, or for satisfying the carnal will of my poor weak
afflicted wife, but by the special movings and compulsions of God now
upon my soul ... and that thereby, if yet I must be an imprisoned
sufferer, it may from this day forward be for the truth as it is in
Jesus, which truth I witness to be truly professed and practised by
the savouriest of people, called Quakers." This had not at once
procured his release, for he remained in Dover Castle through at
least part of 1656. At length, however, after some proposal to let
him go abroad again, or to send him and his wife to the Plantations,
security had been accepted for his good behaviour, and he had been
allowed to live as he liked at Eltham in Kent. Here, and elsewhere,
he sometimes preached, and was in much esteem among the Quakers; and
here, on Saturday the 29th of August, 1657, he died. On the following
Monday his corpse was removed to London and conveyed to the house
called "The Bull and Mouth" at Aldersgate, the chief meeting-place of
the London Quakers. "At this place, that afternoon, assembled a
medley of people, among whom the Quakers were most eminent for
number; and within the house a controversy Was whether the ceremony
of a hearse-cloth should be cast over his coffin; but, the major
part, being Quakers, not assenting, the coffin was about five o'clock
in the evening brought forth into the street. At its coming out,
there stood a man on purpose to cast a velvet hearse-cloth over the
coffin, and he endeavoured to do it; but, the crowd of Quakers not
permitting it and having gotten the body on their shoulders, they
carried it away without further ceremony, and the whole company
conducted it into Moorfields, and thence into the new churchyard
adjoining to Bedlam, where it lieth interred." Lilburne at his death
was but thirty-nine years of age. He was popular to the last with the
Londoners, and there were notices of him, comic and serio-comic,
long after his death. By order of Council, Nov. 4, his Highness
himself present, payment of the arrears of an allowance he had of
40_s._ a week, with continuation of the same allowance
thenceforward, was granted to his wife, Elizabeth.[1]
[Footnote 1: Sewel's _History of the Quakers_. I. 160-163
(where, however, there is an error as to the date of Lilburne's
death); Wood's Ath. III. 357; _Cromwelliana_, 168; Council
Order Books of Nov. 4, 1657.]
When the subdued Lilburne thus went to his grave among the Quakers,
his unsubdued successor in the trade of Anti-Cromwellian conspiracy,
the Anabaptist ex-Colonel Sexby, was in the Tower, waiting his doom.
He had been arrested, July 24, in a mean disguise and with a great
over-grown beard, on board a ship that was to carry him back to
Flanders after one of his visits to London on his desperate design of
an assassination of Cromwell, to be followed by a Spanish-Stuartist
invasion. What _would_ have been his doom can be but guessed. He
became insane in the Tower, and died there in that state Jan. 13,
1657-8. He had previously confessed to Barkstead, the Lieutenant of
the Tower, that he had been the real mover of the Sindercombe Plot,
that he had been in the pay of Spain, and also, apparently, that he
was the author of _Killing no Murder_.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Merc. Pol._ of dates, as quoted in
_Cromwelliana_, 167-170.]
So quiet and even was the course of home-affairs through the first
seven months of the new Protectorate that such glimpses and anecdotes
of particular persons have to suggest the general history. Yet one
more of the sort.
In the parish register of Bolton Percy in Yorkshire there is this
entry: "George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and Mary, the daughter
of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron, of Nunappleton within this
Parish of Bolton Percy, were married the 15th day of September
_anno Dom_. 1657." This was, in fact, the marriage of the great
Fairfax's only child, Marvell's former pupil, now nineteen years of
age, to the Royalist Duke of Buckingham, aged thirty. The poet
Cowley, who had known the Duke since their Cambridge days together,
acted as his best man at the wedding, which was celebrated with great
festivities at Nunappleton, Cowley contributing a poem. But surely
it was a most extraordinary marriage, and, though there had been
rumours of such a possibility for several years, it was heard of with
surprise. The only child and heiress of the great Parliamentarian
General, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, married to this
Royalist of Royalists, the handsome young insurgent in the Second
Civil War of 1648, the boon-companion of Charles II. for some time
abroad, his boon-companion and buffoon all through his dreary year of
Kingship among the Scots, his fellow-fugitive from the field of
Worcester, and ever since, though less in Charles's company than
before, and serving as a volunteer in the French army, yet a main
trump-card in Charles's lists! How had it happened? Easily enough.
The great Fairfax, with ample wealth of his own, had made most
honourable and chivalrous use of the accessions to that wealth that
had come in the shape of Parliamentary grants to him out of the
confiscated estates of Royalists. Now, one such grant, in lieu of a
money pension of £4000 a year, had been a portion of the confiscated
property of the young Duke of Buckingham, including an estate in
Yorkshire and York House in the Strand. The young Duke, stripped of
his revenues of £25,000 a year, had been living meanwhile on the
proceeds of a great collection of pictures, Titians and what not,
that had been made by his father, and which had been quietly conveyed
abroad for sale. But Fairfax had not forgotten the splendid young
man, and had every wish to retrieve his fortunes for him. There had
probably been communications to that end, not only with Buckingham
himself, but even with Charles II.; and the result had been the
Duke's return to England and appearance in Yorkshire, early in 1657,
to woo Mary Fairfax or to complete the wooing. Who could resist him?
It might have been better for Mary Fairfax had she died in her
girlhood, fresh from Marvell's teaching; but now she was Duchess of
Buckingham. York House and the estate in Yorkshire had been restored
to her husband by gift, and Nunappleton and other Fairfax estates
were to be settled on him and her for their lives, and on their heirs
should there be any.[1]
[Footnote 1: Markham's Life of Fairfax, 364-372.]
Naturally, the Protector might have something to say to the
arrangement. The great Fairfax was a man to whom anything in reason
would be granted; and, though Cromwell had no reason to believe that
Fairfax favoured his Protectorate, and there had been even reports
from Thurloe's foreign agents of correspondence between Fairfax and
Charles II.,[1] no one could challenge Fairfax's honour or doubt his
passive allegiance. But a son-in-law like Buckingham about him
altered the case. Little wonder, therefore, that the marriage at
Nunappleton was discussed at the Council in London. On the 9th of
October, his Highness and eight more being present, it was ordered
that a warrant should issue for arresting, and confining in the Isle
of Jersey, George, Duke of Buckingham, who had been "in this nation
for divers months without licence or authority." This led, of course,
to earnest representations from Fairfax. Accordingly, Nov. 17, "His
Highness having communicated to the Council that the Lord Fairfax
hath made addresses to him, with some desires on behalf of the Duke
of Buckingham," it was ordered "That the Resolves and Act of
Parliament in the case of the said Duke be communicated to the Lord
Fairfax as the grounds of the Council's proceedings touching the said
Duke, and that there be withal signified to the Lord Fairfax the
Council's civil respects to his Lordship's own person." The message
was to be conveyed by the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Deputy Fleetwood,
and Lord Strickland. Fairfax and the young couple must have made
farther appeal; for, Dec. 1, his Highness "delivered in to the
Council a paper containing an offer of some reasons in reference to
the Duke of Buckingham his liberty," whereupon it was minuted "That
the Council do declare it as their opinion that it is not consistent
with their duty to advise his Highness to grant the Duke of
Buckingham his liberty as is desired, nor consistent with his
Highness's trust to do the same." Lord Strickland and Sir Charles
Wolseley were to communicate the minute to Fairfax. Probably Fairfax
had come up to town on the business. The young couple would seem to
have remained in the country; nor do I find that the order for the
arrest of the Duke was yet actually enforced.[2]
[Footnote 1: As early as Nov. 1654 Charles II. had written to
Fairfax, begging him to "wipe out all he had done amiss" by such
services to the Royal cause as he might yet render (Macray's
Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers, II. 426).]
[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates.]
What may have disposed Cromwell not to be too harsh about the
marriage was the fact that he had just celebrated the marriages of
his own two youngest daughters. Lady Frances, the youngest, became
Mrs. Rich on the 11th of November, and Lady Mary became Viscountess
Falconbridge on the 18th.
The drift of public interest was now towards the reassembling of the
adjourned Parliament on the 20th of January 1657-8. Especially there
was great curiosity as to the persons that would be called by his
Highness to form the Second or Upper House. That was satisfied in the
course of December by the issue of his Highness's writs under the
great seal (quite in regal style, with the phrases "We," "ourself,"
"our great seal," &c.) to the following _sixty-three_ persons,
the asterisks to be explained presently:--
*Lord Richard Cromwell (_Councillor_, &c.).
Lord Henry Cromwell (_Lord Deputy of Ireland_).
Of the Titular Nobility.
The Earl of Warwick.
The Earl of Manchester.
The Earl of Mulgrave (_Councillor_).
The Earl of Cassilis (Scotch).
William, Viscount Say and Sele.
*Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge (_son-in-law_).
*Philip, Viscount Lisle (_Peer's son and Councillor_).
*Charles, Viscount Howard (raised to this rank by Cromwell,
July 20, 1657).
Philip, Lord Wharton.
*George, Lord Eure.
*Roger, Lord Broghill (_Peer's son_).
*John, Lord Claypole (_son-in-law and "Master of our Horse"_).
Great Army and Navy Officers.
*Lieutenant-General Charles Fleetwood (_son-in-law and
Councillor_).
*Admiral, or "General of our Fleet," John Desborough (_brother-in-law
and Councillor_: made Admiral in suecession to Blake).
*Admiral, or "General of our Fleet," Edward Montague (_Councillor,
and one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury_).
*Commissary-General of Horse, Edward Whalley (_cousin_).
Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, General George Monk.
Great State and Law Officers.
*Nathaniel Fiennes (_Councillor_),
Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal.
*John Lisle, ditto.
*Bulstrode Whitlocke, one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury.
*William Sydenham (_Councillor_), ditto.
*Henry Lawrence (_Lord President of the Council_).
Oliver St. John, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
*John Glynne, Lord Chief Justice of the Upper Bench.
*William Lenthall, Master of the Rolls.
William Steele, Lord Chancellor of Ireland.
Baronets.
Sir Gilbert Gerrard.
Sir Arthur Hasilrig.
*Sir John Hobart.
*Sir Gilbert Pickering (_Councillor and Chamberlain to the
Household_).
*Sir Francis Russell (_Henry Cromwell's father-in-law_).
*Sir William Strickland.
*Sir Charles Wolseley (_Councillor_).
Knights.