Sir George Fleetwood (knighted by Cromwell Sept. 15, 1656).
*Sir John Hewson (_Colonel_, knighted by Cromwell
Dec. 5, 1657).
*Sir Thomas Honeywood.
Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston (Scotch).
Sir William Lockhart (_Ambassador_, knighted by Cromwell
Dec. 10, 1656).
*Sir Christopher Pack (_Alderman_, knighted by Cromwell
Sept. 20, 1656).
*Sir Richard Onslow.
*Sir Thomas Pride (Colonel Pride, knighted by Cromwell
Jan, 17, 1655-6).
*Sir William Roberts.
*Sir Robert Tichbourne (_Alderman_, knighted by Cromwell
Dec. 10, 1656).
Sir Matthew Tomlinson (_Colonel_, knighted in Dublin by Lord
Henry Cromwell. Nov. 25, 1657).
Others.
*James Berry (_the Major-General_).
John Clerke (_Colonel_).
*Thomas Cooper (_Colonel_).
John Crewe.
*John Fiennes.
*William Goffe (_the Major-General_).
*Richard Ingoldsby (_Cousin's son and Colonel_).
*John Jones (_brother-in-law and Colonel_).
*Philip Jones (_Councillor and Colonel_, and now "_Comptroller
of our Household_").
*Richard Hampden (son of the great Hampden).
William Pierrepoint.
Alexander Popham.
*Francis Rous (_Councillor and Provost of Eton_).
*Philip Skippon (_Councillor and Major-General_).
*Walter Strickland (_Councillor_).
*Edmund Thomas.[1]
[Footnote 1: In compiling the list I have used the enumerations in
Parl. Hist. III. 1518-1519, Whitlocke, IV. 313-314, and Godwin. IV.
469-471 (the last two not perfect): also a Pamphlet of April 1659
called _A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament_.]
Such were "Oliver's Peers or Lords," remembered by that name now, and
so called at the time, not because they were Peers or Lords in the
old sense, but because they were to be members of that "Other House"
which, by Article V. of the _Petition and Advice_, was to
exercise some of the functions of the old House of Lords. The
selection was various enough, and probably as good as could be made;
but there must have been great doubts as to the result. Would those
of the old English hereditary nobility whom it had been deemed
politic to summon condescend to sit as fellow-peers with Hewson, once
a shoemaker, Pride, once a brewer's drayman, and Berry, once a clerk
in some iron works? What of Manchester, recollecting his deadly
quarrel with Cromwell as long ago as 1644-5, and what of Say and
Sele, who had remained sternly aloof from the Protectorate from the
very first, the pronounced Oliverianism of two of his sons
notwithstanding? Then would Anti-Oliverian Commoners like Hasilrig
and Gerrard, hating the Protector with their whole hearts, take it as
a compliment to be removed from the Commons, where they could have
some power in opposition, to a so-called Upper House where they would
be lost in a mass of Oliverians? Farther, of the Oliverians who would
have willingly taken their seats and been useful, several of the most
distinguished, such as Henry Cromwell, Monk, Lockhart, and Tomlinson,
were at a distance, and could not appear immediately. Finally, if,
after all these deductions, a sufficient House should be brought
together, it would be at the expense of a considerable weakening of
the Government party in the Commons by the withdrawal of leading
members thence, and this at a time when such weakening was most
dangerous. For, by the _Petition and Advice_, were not the
Anti-Oliverians excluded from last session, to the number of ninety
or more, to take their seats in the Commons now, without farther let
or hindrance from the Protector?
Cromwell had, doubtless, foreseen that one of the difficulties of his
Second Protectorate would be the transition from the system of a
Single-House Parliament, now nine years in use, to a revived form of
the method of Two Houses. The experiment, however, had been, of his
own suggestion and was still to his liking, Could the Second House
take root, it might aid him, on the one hand, in that steady and
orderly domestic policy which, he desired in general, and it might
increase his power, on the other hand, to stand firmly on his own
broad notion of religious toleration. At all events, the time had now
come when the difficulty must be faced.
On Wednesday. Jan. 20, 1657-8; the members of the two Senses, such of
them at least as had appeared, were duly in their places. Those of
the new House were assembled in what tad formerly been the House of
Lords, Of the sixty-three that had been summoned forty-three had
presented themselves and had been sworn in by the form of oath
prescribed in the _Petition and Advice_, They were the
forty-three whose names are marked by asterisks in the preceding list
of those summoned. When it is considered that from seven to ten of
those not asterisked there (e.g. Henry Cromwell, Monk, Steele,
Lockhart, and Tomlinson) would certainly have taken their places but
for necessary and distant absence, and might take them yet, the House
mast be called, so far, a very successful one. It had failed most
conspicuously, as had been expected, in one of its proposed
ingredients. Of the old English Peers there had come in only Visconnt
Falconbridge and Lord Eure; Warwick, Manchester, Say and Sele,
Wharton, even Mulgrave, were absent. More ominous still was the
absence of the Anti-Oliverian commoner Sir Arthur Hasilrig, He had
not yet come to town, and there was much speculation what course he
would take if he did come. Would he regard himself as still member
for Leicester in the Commons House, though he had been excluded
thence in September 1656, as he had before been driven from the same
seat in the First Parliament of the Protectorate; and would he
reclaim that seat now rather than go into the Upper House? Meanwhile
for most of those who had been excluded in Sept. 1658 along with
Hasilrig there was no such dilemma; and, accordingly, they had
mustered, in pretty large number, to claim their seats in the
Commons, The only formality with which they had to comply now was the
prescribed oath of the _Petition and Advice_, by which they, as
well as the members of the Upper House, were to swear, among other
things, "to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector," &c., and not
to "contrive, design, or attempt anything against his person or
lawful authority." It is evident that Cromwell trusted a good deal to
the effects of this oath; for he had taken care that there should be
stately commissioners in the lobby of the Commons from a very early
hour in the morning to swear the members as they came in. As many as
150 or 180 members in all, the formerly excluded and the old sitters
together, seem to have been in the House, thus sworn, about the time
when the forty-three were assembled in the adjacent Other House. The
Commons had then resumed business, on their own account, as met after
regular adjournment. They had appointed a Mr. John Smythe to be their
Clerk, in lieu of Mr. Henry Scobell, now made general "Clerk of the
Parliament" and transferred to the Other House, and they had fixed
that day week as a day of prayer for divine assistance, when the
Usher of the Black Rod appeared to summon them to meet his Highness
in the Other House. Arranging that the Sergeant-at-Arms should carry
the mace with him, and stand by the Speaker with the mace at his
shoulder through the whole interview with his Highness, the House
obeyed the summons.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, Jan. 20, 1657-8, et seq.; Ludlow,
596-597; List of the 43 who sat in the Upper House in pamphlet of
1659 already cited, called _A Second Narrative_, &c.]
Cromwell's speech to the two Houses (Speech XVI.) opened
significantly with the words "_My Lords, and Gentlemen of the House
of Commons_." It was a very quiet speech, somewhat slowly and
heavily delivered, with "peace" for the key-word. He represented the
nation as now in such a nourishing state, especially in the
possession of a settled and efficient Public Ministry of the Gospel,
and at the same time of ample religious liberty for all, that nothing
more was needed than oblivion of past differences, and a hearty
co-operation of the two Houses with each other, and with himself.
Apologizing for being too ill to discourse more at length, he asked
Lord Commissioner Fiennes to do so for him. The speech of Fiennes was
essentially a continuation in the same strain, but with a
gorgeousness and variety of metaphor, Biblical and poetical, in
description of the new era of peace and its duties, utterly beyond
the bounds of usual Parliamentary oratory even then, and to which
Cromwell and the rest, with all their experience of metaphor from the
pulpit, must have listened with astonishment. "Jacob, speaking to his
son Joseph, said _I had not thought to have seen thy face, and lo!
God hath showed me thy seed, also:_ meaning his two sons, Ephraim
and Manasseh. And may not many amongst us well say some years hence
_We had not thought to have seen a Chief Magistrate again among us,
and lo! God hath shown us a Chief Magistrate in his Two Houses of
Parliament?_ Now may the good God make them like Ephraim and
Manasseh, that the Three Nations may be blessed in them, saying
_God made thee like these Two Houses of Parliament, which two, like
Leah and Rachel, did build the House of God!_ May you do worthily
in Ephrata, and be famous in Bethlehem!" There was more of the same
kind, including a comparison of the new constitution of the
_Petition and Advice_ to the perfected eduction of the orderly
universe out of chaos. It was the speech of a Puritan Jean Paul.[1]
[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 320-326; Commons Journals Jan. 21 and
Jan. 25, 1657-8. Fiennes's speech is given in full under the last
date, and must have much talked of. Whitlocke also prints it, IV.
315-329.]
Which of the two Houses was Ephraim and which Manasseh in Fiennes's
own fancy does not appear; but the Commons had already voted
themselves to be Ephraim, and the Other House to be the questionable
Manasseh. The Anti-Oliverians among them, now in the majority or
nearly so, had resolved that their best policy, bound as they were by
oath to the Protectorate and the new Constitution of the _Petition
and Advice_ generally, would be to question the powers of the new
House as defined in the constituting document. The definition had
been rather vague. The meaning had certainly been that the new House
should be a legislative House, standing in very much the same
relation to the Commons as the old House of Lords had done, and not
merely a Judicial High Court for certain classes of cases, with
general powers of advice to the Commons in the conduct of weighty
affairs. This, however, was what the Anti-Oliverians in the Commons
contended; and on this contention, if possible, they were to break
down the Other House and so make a gap in the new Constitution. They
had made a beginning even in the small matter of the relative claims
of Mr. Smythe, their own new Clerk, and Mr. Scobell, as general
"Clerk of the Parliament," to the possession of certain documents;
but they found a better opportunity when, at their third sitting
(Jan. 22, afternoon), they were informed that "some gentlemen were at
the door with a message from the Lords." The message was merely a
request that the Commons would join the Lords in an address to his
Highness asking him to appoint a day of humiliation throughout the
three nations; but, purporting to be from "the Lords," it cut very
deep. By a majority of seventy-five to fifty-one it was resolved
"That this House will send an answer by messengers of their own,"
i.e. that they would take time to consider the subject. Two more days
passed, the House transacting some miscellaneous business, but
nursing its resolution for a split; and, on Monday the 25th, lo! Sir
Arthur Hasilrig among them, standing up prominently and insisting on
being sworn and admitted to his seat. He had disdained the summons to
the Other House, and his proper place was _here!_ With some
hesitation, he was duly sworn, and so was added to the group of
Anti-Oliverian leaders already in the House. He, Thomas Scott, Sir
Anthony Ashley Cooper, John Weaver, Sergeant Maynard, and one or two
others, were thenceforth to head the opposition within doors. Outside
there were in process of signature certain great petitions to the
Commons House intended to widen the difference between it and the
Protector.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Godwin, IV. 479-495; Carlyle,
III. 328.]
At this point the Protector interposed. On the afternoon of the same
day on which Hasilrig had taken his seat (Jan. 25) the Commons were
summoned to the Banqueting House in Whitehall, to listen to another
speech from his Highness (Speech XVII.), addressed to them and the
Other House together. It opened with the phrase "_My Lords and
Gentlemen of thee Two Houses of Parliament_," to obviate any
objections there might be to the form of opening in the speech of
five days before; and it was conceived in the same spirit of
respectfulness to both Houses and anxiety for their support. But it
expounded, more strongly and at more length than the former speech,
the pressing reasons for unanimity now. It surveyed, first, the state
of Europe generally, dwelling on the ominous combination of Roman
Catholic interests everywhere, and the perils to the Protestant Cause
from the disputes among the Protestant Powers, and especially from
the hostility of the Danes and the Dutch to the heroic King of
Sweden, who had "adventured his all against the Popish Interest In
Poland." It declared the vital concern of Great Britain in all this,
if only because an invasion of Great Britain in behalf of the Stuarts
was a settled part of the Anti-Protestant programme. "You have
accounted yourselves happy in being environed with a great Ditch from
all the world beside. Truly, you will not be able to keep your Ditch,
nor your shipping, unless you turn your ships and shipping into
troops of horse and companies of foot, and fight to defend yourselves
on _terra firma_." Then, turning to the state of affairs at
home, he insisted on the necessity of a general union in defence of
the existing settlement. One Civil War more, he said, would throw the
nation into a universal confusion, with or without a restoration of
the Stuarts, and, if _with_ such a restoration, then with
consequences to some that they did not now contemplate. He made no
express reference to the proceedings in the Commons of the last few
days, but implored both Houses to abstain from dissensions, stand on
the basis to which he and they had sworn, and join with him in real
work.[1]
[Footnote 1: Carlyle, III. 329-347.]
The appeal to the Commons was in vain. After three or four more
meetings, they resumed, Jan. 29, the subject of the answer to be
returned to the message of the 22nd from the Other House. By a vote
of eighty-four to seventy-eight they resolved to go into Grand
Committee on the subject. This having been done, they resolved, Jan.
30, "That the first thing to be debated shall be the Appellation to
be given to the persons to whom the answer shall be made." On this
one point there was a protracted debate of four days, the
oppositionists insisting that the appellation should be simply "The
Other House," as in the _Petition and Advice_, and the
Oliverians contending that that was no name at all, that it had been
employed in the _Petition and Advice_ only as a blank to be
afterwards filled up, and that the proper name would be "The House of
Lords." In one of two divisions on Feb. 3 the votes were eighty-seven
against eighty-six; in the other they were ninety-three against
eighty-seven. These divisions, however, were merely incidental, and
the debate was still going on fiercely on Thursday, Feb. 4. Scott had
spoken and was trying to speak again in defiance of rule, with
Hasilrig backing him, when "Mr. Speaker informed the House that the
Usher of the Black Rod was at the door with a message from his
Highness." Hasilrig seems to have been still on his feet when the
Black Rod, having been admitted, delivered his message: "Mr. Speaker,
His Highness is in the Lords House, and desires to speak with you."
Thither they adjourned, and there his Highness briefly addressed the
two Houses once again (Speech XVIII.). Or rather he addressed both
Houses only through about half of his speech; for, at a particular
point, he turned deliberately to the Commons and proceeded thus: "I
do not speak to these Gentlemen, or Lords, or whatsoever you will
call them; I speak not this to _them_, but to _you_. You
advised me to come into this place [the Second Protectorship], to be
in a capacity by your advice. Yet, instead of owning a thing, some
must have I know not what; and you have not only disjointed
yourselves but the whole Nation, which is in likelihood of running
into more confusion in these fifteen or sixteen days that you have
sat than it hath been from the rising of the last session to this
day. Through the intention of devising a Commonwealth again, that
some people might be the men that might rule all! And they are
endeavouring to engage the Army to carry that thing. And hath that
man been true to this Nation, whosoever he be, especially that hath
taken an oath, thus to prevaricate? These designs have been made
among the Army, to break and divide us. I speak this in the presence
of some of the Army: that these things have not been according to
God, nor according to truth, pretend what you will. These things tend
to nothing else but the playing of the King of Scots' game (if I may
so call him); and I think myself bound before God to do what I can to
prevent it. That which I told you in the Banqueting House was true:
that there are preparations of force to invade us, God is my witness,
it hath been confirmed to me since, not a day ago, that the King of
Scots hath an Army at the water's side, ready to be shipped for
England. I have it from those who have been eyewitnesses of it. And,
while it is doing, there are endeavours from some who are not far
from this place to stir up the people of this town into a
tumulting--what if I said into a rebellion? And I hope I shall make
it appear to be no better, if God assist me. It hath been not only
your endeavour to pervert the Army while you have been sitting, and
to draw them to state the question about a Commonwealth; but some of
you have been listing of persons, by commission of Charles Stuart, to
join with any insurrection that may be made. And what is like to come
upon this, the enemy being ready to invade us, but even present blood
and confusion? And, if this be so, I do assign it to this cause: your
not assenting to what you did invite me to by your _Petition and
Advice,_ as that which might prove the Settlement of the Nation.
And, if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I
think it high time that an end be put to your sitting. And I DO
DISSOLVE THIS PARLIAMENT. And let God be judge between you and
me!"[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; and Carlyle, III. 348-353.]
Thus, after a second session of only sixteen days, the Second
Parliament of the Protectorate was at an end. Cromwell's explanation
of his reasons for dissolving it is perfectly accurate. Through the
first session the Parliament, as a Single House Parliament, had, by
the exclusion of about ninety of those returned to it, been a
thoroughly Oliverian body, and its chief work had been a
reconstitution of the Protectorate on a definite basis; but through
the second session this Parliament, though nominally the same, had
been split into two Houses, the House of Lords wholly Oliverian, but
the House of Commons, by the loss of a number of its former members
and the readmission of the excluded, turned into an Anti-Oliverian
conclave. Fourteen folio pages of the _Commons Journals_ are
the only remaining formal records of the short and unfortunate
Session. Oliver's Lords can have had little more to do than meet and
look at each other.
* * * * *
There was to be no Parliament more while Cromwell lived. For seven
months onwards from Feb. 4, 1657-8, he was to govern, one may say,
more alone than ever, more as a sovereign, and with all his energies
in performance of the sovereignty more tremendously on the strain.
There was still, of course, the Council, now essentially a Privy
Council, meeting twice or thrice a week, or sometimes on special
summons, and with this novelty in the public style and title of the
councillors, that those of them who had been in the Upper House of
the late Parliament retained the name of "Lords." Lord President
Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, Lord Fleetwood, Lord Montague, Lord
Commissioner Fiennes, Lord Desborough, Lord Viscount Lisle, the Earl
of Mulgrave, Lord Rous, Lord Skippon, Lord Pickering (_alias_
"The Lord Chamberlain"), Lord Strickland, Lord Wolseley, Lord
Sydenham, Lord Jones (_alias_ "Mr. Comptroller"), and Mr.
Secretary Thurloe: such would have been the minute of a complete
_sederunt_ of the Council when, it resumed duty after the
dissolution of the Parliament. There never was such a complete
_sederunt:_ ten out of the sixteen was the average attendance,
rising sometimes to twelve. Occasionally Cromwell came to one of
their meetings; but generally they transacted business among
themselves to his order, and communicated with him privately. A few
of the Councillors were more closely in his confidence than the rest;
Whitlocke, though not of the Council, was often consulted about
special affairs; and the man-of-all-work, closeted with his Highness
daily, was Mr. Secretary Thurloe. His Highness had, moreover, a
private secretary, Mr. William Malyn, who had been with him already
for several years.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Feb. 1857-8 onwards; Thurloe,
II. 224.]
As Cromwell had intimated in his Dissolution Speech, his first labour
after the dissolution was to attack that vast complication of dangers
of which he had already sure knowledge, and which he declared to have
been caused, or brought to a head, by the wretched conduct of the
Commons through their sixteen days of session, and by the positive
treason of some of their number. He had described the dangers as
gathering from two quarters, though they were already interrelated
and would run together at last. There was "the King of Scots' game,"
or the plot of a Royalist commotion in conjunction with a threatened
invasion of the Spanish-Stuartist Army; and there was the design of a
great insurrection of Old Commonwealth's men for a subversion of the
Protectorate and a return to the pure Single-House Republic. Of the
first danger he had said, "I think myself bound before God to do what
I can to prevent it"; the second he had denounced as rebellion,
saying, "I hope I shall make it appear to be no better, if God assist
me." For three or four months he was to be engaged in making good
these words; but he had begun already. On February 6, at a great
meeting of the Army-officers in the Banqueting House, he had
discoursed to them impressively for two hours, abashing two or three
that had been tampered with, and receiving from the rest assurances
of their eternal fidelity. Ludlow says that, for several nights
successively, before or after this meeting, Cromwell himself took the
inspection of the watch among the soldiers at Whitehall.[1]
[Footnote 1: 2 Ludlow, 598-600; Godwin. IV. 496-7.]
As always, Cromwell's tenderness towards the Republicans or Old
Commonwealth's men appeared now in his dealings with the new
commotion on that side. Colonel Packer and Captain Gladman, two
disaffected officers in his own regiment of horse, appear to have
been merely dismissed from their commands; and one hears besides of
but a few arrests, with no farther consequences than examination
before the Council and temporary imprisonment. Harrison was again
arrested, the Fifth-Monarchy men having, of course, lent themselves
to the agitation, and Harrison having this time, Whitlocke says, been
certainly "deep in it." Among the others arrested were Mr. John
Carew, the Regicide and Councillor under the Commonwealth, John
Portman, who had been secretary to Blake in the Fleet, a Hugh
Courtney, and John Rogers, a preacher. There seems to have been no
thought of any proceedings against Hasilrig, Scott, Sir Anthony
Ashley Cooper, and the other Anti-Cromwellian leaders in the late
Parliament. This, however, is less remarkable than that, with
information in Cromwell's possession that some of the members of the
Parliament, nominally Commonwealth's men, had actually commissions
from Charles II. and were enlisting persons under such commissions
for any possible insurrection whatever, he had contented himself with
announcing the fact in his Dissolution Speech and so merely
signifying to the culprits that their lives were in his hands.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 599-600; Whitlocke, IV. 330; Godwin, IV.
502-503.]
The Royalist project and its ramifications were really very
formidable. A Spanish Army of about 8000 men, with Charles II. and
his refugees among them, _was_ gathered about Bruges, Brussels,
and Ostend, with vessels of transport provided; and the burst of a
great Royalist Insurrection at home, in Sussex, London, and
elsewhere, _was_ to coincide with the invasion from abroad. The
Duke of Ormond himself had come to London in disguise, to observe
matters and make preparations. He was in London for three weeks,
living in the house of a Roman Catholic surgeon in Drury Lane, till
Cromwell, who knew the fact, generously sent Lord Broghill to him
with a hint to be gone. This was early in March, some days after a
proclamation "commanding all Papists and other persons who have been
of the late King's party or his son's to depart out of the cities of
London and Westminster," and another proclamation forbidding such
persons living in the country to stir more than five miles from their
fixed places of abode. On the 12th of that month the Lord Mayor,
Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of London met his Highness
and the Army-officers by appointment at Whitehall, where his Highness
explained to them at length the nature of the crisis, informed them
particularly of the strength of the Flanders army of invasion,
Ormond's visit, &c., and solemnly committed to them the safety of the
City. The response of the City authorities was extremely loyal.[1]
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 507-508; Carlyle, III. 353-354; _Merc.
Pol._, of March 11-18, 1657-8, quoted in _Cromwelliana_,
pp. 170-171. The Proclamation ordering Papists and other Royalists
out of London and Westminster, and that ordering such persons in the
country to keep near home, are both dated Feb. 25, 1657-8. There are
copies at the end of one of the volumes of the Council's minutes.]
On the principle that the country could not afford for ever this
periodical trouble of a Royalist Conspiracy, and that some examples
of severity might make the present upheaving the last of the kind,
Cromwell had resolved on a few such examples. His information,
through Thurloe and otherwise, was unerring. He knew, and had known
for some time, who were the members of the so-called "Sealed Knot,"
i.e. that secret association of select Royalists resident in England
who were in closest correspondence with Hyde and the other
Councillors of Charles abroad, and were chiefly trusted by them for
the management of the cause at home, Indeed, Sir Richard Willis, one
of the chiefs of the "Sealed Knot," had for some time been in
understanding with Cromwell, pledged to him by a peculiar compact,
and revealing to him all that passed among the Royalists. Hence,
before the end of April, some of the members of the "Sealed Knot,"
and a number of leading Royalists besides, had been lodged in the
Tower. Among them were Colonel John Russell (brother of the Earl of
Bedford), Colonel John White, Sir William Compton, Sir William
Clayton, Sir Henry Slingsby (a prisoner in Hull since the Royalist
rising of 1654-5, but negotiating there desperately of late to secure
the officers and the town itself for Charles), Sir Humphrey Bennett,
Mr. John Mordaunt (brother of the Earl of Peterborough), Dr. John
Hewit (a London Episcopal clergyman), Mr. Thomas Woodcock, and a
Henry Mallory. It was part of the understanding with Willis that
several of the prisoners, Willis's particular friends, should be
ultimately released. For trial were selected Slingsby, Clayton,
Bennett, Mordaunt, Woodcock, Mallory, and Dr. Hewit. The trials were
in Westminster Hall, in May and June, before a great High Court of
Justice, consisting of all the judges, some of the great state
officers, and a hundred and thirty commissioners besides, all in
conformity with an Act of the late Parliament prescribing the mode of
trial for such prime offences. Five of the seven were either
acquitted or spared: only Slingsby and Dr. Hewit were brought to the
scaffold. They were beheaded on Tower Hill, June 8. Much influence
was exerted in behalf of Hewit; but, besides that he had been deeply
implicated, he had been contumacious in the Court, challenging its
competency, and refusing to plead. Prynne had stood by him, and
prepared his demurrer.--From the evidence collected in Dr. Hewit's
case it appeared that he, if not Ormond, had been calculating on the
co-operation of Fairfax, Lambent, Sir William Waller, and a great
many other persons of name, up and down the country, not included
among those whom Cromwell had seen fit to arrest. As Thurloe
distinctly says, "It's certain Sir William Waller was fully engaged,"
the omission, of that veteran commander from the number must have
been an act of grace. About Lambert the speculation seems to have
been absurd; and, though Cromwell must have known that Fairfax was
now inclining generally towards a Restoration, he cannot have
believed anything stronger at present in his case. There was no
public reference to such high personages; nor, with the exception of
some friendly expostulation by the Protector with a young Mr. John
Stapley of Sussex (son of Stapley the Regicide and Councillor of the
Commonwealth), who _had_ been lured into the business, was any
account taken of the other miscellaneous persons in Hewit's list of
reputable sympathisers. It was enough for Cromwell to know who had
swerved so far, and to have made examples of Hewit himself and
Slingsby.--These two would have been the only victims but for a wild
sub-conspiracy in the City of London while the trials of Hewit and
Slingsby were in progress. A few desperate cavaliers about town, the
chief of whom were a Sir William Leighton, a Colonel Deane, and a
Colonel Manley, holding commissions from Charles, had met several
times at the Mermaid Tavern and elsewhere, and had arranged for a
midnight tumult on Saturday the 15th of May. They were to attack the
guard at St. Paul's, seize the Lord Mayor, raise a conflagration near
the Tower, &c. The hour had come, and the conspirators were in the
Mermaid Tavern for their final arrangements, when lo! the trainbands
on the alert all round them and Barkstead riding through the streets
with a train of five small cannon. A good many were arrested, thirty
of them London prentices. Six of the principals were condemned July
2, of whom one was hanged, two were hanged, drawn, and quartered, and
three were reprieved. For the prentices there was all clemency.[1]
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-870; Godwin, IV. 508-527; _Merc.
Pol_, May 13-20, 1658, quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 171-172;
Thurloe, VII. 25, 65-69, 88-90, 100, and 147-8; Whitlocke, IV. 334.]
Though the prosecutions of the Royalist plotters were not concluded
till the beginning of July, all real danger from the plot itself had
been over in March or April, when Ormond was back in Bruges with the
report that his mission had been abortive and that Cromwell was too
strong. We must go back, therefore, for the other threads of our
narrative.
The death of Mr. Robert Rich, Cromwell's son-in-law since the
preceding November, had occurred Feb. 16, 1657-8, only twelve days
after the dissolution of the Parliament. Cromwell, saddened by the
event himself, had found time even then to write letters of
condolence and comfort to the young man's grandfather, the Earl of
Warwick. The Earl's reply, dated March 11, is extant. "My pen and my
heart," it begins, "were ever your Lordship's servants; now they are
become your debtors. This paper cannot enough confess my obligation,
and much less discharge it, for your seasonable and sympathising
letters, which, besides the value they deserve from so worthy a hand,
express such faithful affections, and administer such Christian
advice, as renders them beyond measure welcome and dear to me." Then,
after pious expression at once of his grief and of his resignation,
he concludes with words that have a historical value. "My Lord," he
says, "all this is but a broken echo of your pious counsel, which
gives such ease to my oppressed mind that I can scarce forbid my pen
being tedious. Only it remembers your Lordship's many weighty and
noble employments, which, together with your prudent, heroic, and
honourable managery of them, I do here congratulate as well as my
grief will give me leave. Others' goodness is their own; yours is a
whole country's, yea three kingdoms'--for which you justly possess
interest and renown with wise and good men: virtue is a thousand
escutcheons. Go on, my Lord; go on happily, to love Religion, to
exemplify it. May your Lordship long continue an instrument of use, a
pattern of virtue, and a precedent of glory!" On the 19th of April
1658, or not six weeks after the letter was written, the old Earl
himself died. By that time the louring appearances had rolled away,
and Cromwell's "prudent, heroic, and honourable managery" had again
been widely confessed.[1]
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 527-531, where Warwick's beautiful letter is
quoted in full, but where his death is postdated by a month. See
Thurloe, VII. 85.]
Through all the turmoil of the proceedings against the plotters
Cromwell had not abated his interest in his bold enterprise in
Flanders, or in his alliance with the French generally. That alliance
having been renewed for another year (March 28, 1658), reinforcements
were sent to the English auxiliary army to fit it for farther work in
the Netherlands. Sir John Reynolds, the first commander of that army,
having been unfortunately drowned in returning to England on a short
leave of absence (Dec. 5, 1657), the Governorship of Mardike had
come into the hands of Major-General Morgan, while the command in the
field had been assigned to Lockhart, hitherto the Protector's
Ambassador only, though soldiering had been formerly his more
familiar business. In conjunction with Turenne, Lockhart had been
pushing on the war, and at length (May 1658) the two armies, and
Montagu's fleet, were engaged in the exact service which Cromwell
most desired, and Lockhart had been always urging. This was the siege
of Dunkirk, with a view to the possession of that town, as well as
Mardike, by the English. To be near the scene of such important
operations, Louis XIV. and Cardinal Mazarin had taken up their
quarters at Calais; and, not to miss the opportunity of such near
approach of the French monarch to the shores of England, Cromwell
despatched his son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge on a splendid embassy
of compliment and congratulation. He landed at Calais on the 29th of
May, was received by both King and Cardinal with such honours as they
had never accorded to an ambassador before, and returned on the 3rd
of June to make his report. The very next day there was a tremendous
battle close to Dunkirk between the French-English forces under
Turenne and Lockhart and a Spanish army which had come for the relief
of the besieged town under Don John of Austria and the Prince of
Condé, with the Dukes of York and Gloucester in their retinue. Mainly
by the bravery of Lockhart's "immortal six thousand," the victory of
the French and English was complete; and, though the Marquis of
Leyda, the Spanish Governor of Dunkirk, maintained the defence
valiantly, the town had to surrender on the 14th of June, two days
after the Marquis had been mortally wounded in a sally. Next day,
according to the Treaty with Cromwell, the town was at once delivered
to Lockhart, Louis XIV. himself, who was on the spot, handing him the
keys. Already, while that event was unknown, and merely to
reciprocate the compliment of Falconbridge's embassy to Calais, there
had been sent across the Channel, in the name of Louis XIV., the Duke
de Crequi, first Gentleman of his Bedchamber, and M. Mancini, the
nephew of Cardinal Mazarin, "accompanied by divers of the nobility of
France and many gentlemen of quality." Met at Dover by Fleetwood and
an escort, they arrived in London June 16, and remained there till
the 21st, having audiences with his Highness, delivering to him
letters from Louis and the Cardinal, and entertained by him with all
possible magnificence. While they were there, a special envoy joined
them, announcing the capture of Dunkirk; and so the joy was complete.
There was nothing the French King would not do to show his regard for
the great Protector; and, but for his Majesty's illness at that
moment from small-pox, the Cardinal himself would have come over
instead of sending his nephew. And why should there not be a renewal
of the Treaty after the expiry of the present term, to secure another
year or two of that co-operation of the English Army and Fleet with
Turenne which had led already to such excellent results? What if
Ostend, as well as Dunkirk and Mardike, were to be made over to the
Protector? These were suggestions for the future, and meanwhile new
successes _were_ added to the capture of Dunkirk. Town after
town in Flanders, including Gravelines at last, yielded to Turenne,
or other generals, and received French garrisons, and through the
summer autumn the Spaniards were so beset in Flanders that an
expedition thence for the invasion of England in the interest of
Charles Stuart, or in any other interest, was no longer even a
possibility.[1]
[Footnote 1: Godwin, IV. 544-551; where, however, the digest of facts
does not seem accurate in every point. Compare Thurloe, VII. 173-177
and-192-3, and _Merc. Pol._ June 10-17 and June 17-24, 1658 (as
quoted in _Cromwelliana_, 172-173), and Guizot, II 380-388.]
While thus turning to account the alliance with the only Catholic
power with which there could be safe dealing, the Protector clung
firmly to his idea of a League among the Protestant Powers
themselves. If Burnet's information is correct, it was about this
time that he contemplated the institution in London of "a Council for
the Protestant Religion in opposition to the Congregation _De
Propaganda_ _Fide_ at Rome." It was to sit at Chelsea
College: there were to be seven Councillors, with a large yearly fund
at their disposal; the world was to be mapped out into four great
regions; and for each region there was to be a Secretary at £500 a
year, maintaining a correspondence with that region, ascertaining the
state of Religion in it, and any exigency requiring interference.
That remained only a project; but meanwhile there was the agency of
Jephson with the King of Sweden, of Meadows with the King of Denmark,
of Downing with the United Provinces, and of other Envoys here and
there, all working for peace among the Protestant States and joint
action against the common enemy. In the Council Order Books for May
1658 one comes also upon new considerations of the old subject of the
Protestants of the Piedmontese valleys, with a fresh remittance of
£3000 for their relief, and an advance at the same time of £500 out
of the Piedmontese Fund for the kindred purpose of relieving twenty
distressed Bohemian families. Indeed in that month his Highness was
again at white heat on the subject of his favourite Piedmontese. The
Treaty of Pignerol, by which the persecuting Edict of 1655 had been
recalled and liberty of worship again yielded to the poor Vaudois
(ante pp. 43-44), had gradually been less and less regarded; there
were new troubles to the Vaudois from the House of Savoy; there were
even signs of a possible repetition in the valleys of all the former
horrors. How to prevent that was a serious thought with Cromwell amid
all his other affairs; and he made his most effective stroke by an
immediate appeal to the French King. On the 26th of May there went to
his Majesty one of Milton's Latin State Letters in the Protector's
name, adjuring him, by his own honour and by the faith of their
alliance, to save the poor Piedmontese and secure the Treaty which
had been made in their behalf by former French intervention; and on
the same day there went a letter to Lockhart urging him to his utmost
diligence in the matter, and suggesting that the French King should
incorporate the Piedmontese valleys with his own dominion, giving the
Duke of Savoy some bit of territory with a Catholic population in
exchange. Reaching Louis XIV. and Lockhart at the moment of the great
success before Dunkirk, these letters accomplished their object. The
will of France was signified at Turin, and the Protestants of the
Valleys had another respite.[1]
[Footnote 1: Burnet (ed. 1823), I. 133; Letters of Downing, &c. in
Thurloe, Vol. VII.; Council Order Books of date; Carlyle, III.
357-365.]
Were one asked what subject of home concern had the first place in
Cromwell's attention through all the events and transactions that
have hitherto been noticed, the answer must still be the same for
this as for all the previous portions of his Protectorate. It was
"The Propagation of the Gospel," with all that was then implied in
that phrase as construed by himself.
As regarded England and Wales, the phrase meant, all but exclusively,
the sustenance, extension, and consolidation of Cromwell's Church
Establishment. The _Trustees for the better Maintenance of
Ministers_, as well as the _Triers_ and _Ejectors_, were
still at work; and in the Council minutes of the summer of 1658, just
as formerly, there are orders for augmentations of ministers'
stipends, combinations of parishes and chapelries, and the like.
Substantially, the Established Church had been brought into a
condition nearly approaching Cromwell's ideal; but he had still
notions of more to be done for it in one direction or another, and
especially in the direction of wider theological comprehension. He
did not despair of seeing his great principle of concurrent endowment
yet more generally accepted among those who were really and
evangelically Protestant. Much would depend on the nature of that
Confession of Faith which Article XI. of the _Petition and
Advice_ had required or promised as a standard of what should be
considered qualifying orthodoxy for the Church of the Protectorate.
For such a purpose the Westminster Confession of Faith, even though
its doctrinal portions might stand much as they were, could hardly
suffice as a whole. That Confession was to be recast, or a new one
framed. So the _Petition and Advice_ had provided or suggested;
but it may be doubted whether Cromwell was very anxious for any such
formal definition of the creed of his Established Church. He
preferred the broad general understanding which all men had, with
himself, as to what constituted sound Evangelical Christianity, and
he had more trust in administration in detail through his Triers and
Ejectors than in the application of formulas of orthodoxy. Here,
however, Owen and the other Independent divines most in his
confidence appear to have differed from him. They felt the want of
some such confession and agreement for Association and Discipline as
might suit at least the Congregationalists of the Established Church,
and be to them what the Westminster Confession was to the
Presbyterians. "From the first, all or at least the generality of our
churches," they said, "have been in a manner like so many ships,
though holding forth the same general colours, yet launched singly,
and sailing apart and alone on the vast ocean of these tumultuous
times, and exposed to every wind of doctrine, under no other conduct
than that of the word and spirit, and their particular elders and
principal brethren, without association among themselves, or so much
as holding out common lights to others to know where they were." A
petition to this effect, though not in these terms, having been
presented to his Highness, he reluctantly yielded. He allowed a
preliminary meeting of representatives of the Congregational churches
in and about London to be held on June 21, 1658, and circular letters
to be sent out to all the Congregational churches in England and
Wales convoking a Synod at the Savoy on the 29th of September. The
Confession of Faith, if any, to be drawn up by this Synod was not, of
course, to be the comprehensive State Confession foreshadowed in
Article XI. of the _Petition and Advice_, but only the voluntary
agreement of the Congregationalists or Independents for themselves.
In fact, to all appearance, if the harmonious comprehension of
moderate Anglicans, Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, within
one and the same Church, was to be signified by written symbols as
well as carried out practically, this could be done only by a plan of
concurrent confessions justifying the concurrent endowments. Even for
that, it would seem, Cromwell was now prepared. Yet he was a little
dubious about the policy of the coming Synod, and certainly was as
much resolved as ever that Synods and other ecclesiastical assemblies
should be only a permitted machinery for the denominations
severally, and that the Civil Magistrate should determine what
denominations could be soldered together to make a suitable
State-Church, and should supervise and make fast the junctions.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of May 1658; Neal's Puritans, IV.
188 et seq.; Orme's Life of Owen, 230-232.]
There is very striking evidence of Cromwell's attention at this time
to the spiritual needs of Scotland in particular.--Early in 1657 we
left Mr. James Sharp in London as agent for the Scottish Resolutioner
clergy, and Principal Gillespie of Glasgow, Mr. James Guthrie, Mr.
James Simpson, and Johnstone of Warriston, with the Marquis of Argyle
in the background, opposing the clever Sharp, and soliciting his
Highness's favour for the Scottish Protesters or Remonstrants (ante
pp. 115-116). Both deputations had remained on in London
perseveringly, Sharp making interest with the Protector through
Broghill; Thurloe, and the London Presbyterian ministers, while Owen,
Lockyer, and the rest of the Independent ministers, with Lambert and
Fleetwood, took part rather with the agents of the Protesters.
Wearied with listening to the dispute personally, Cromwell had
referred it to a mixed committee of twelve English Presbyterians and
Independents, and at length had told both parties to "go home and
agree among themselves." Sharp, Simpson, and Guthrie had,
accordingly, returned to Scotland before the autumn of 1657; and,
though Gillespie, Warriston, and Argyle were left behind, it was
difficult to say that either party had won the advantage. Baillie,
indeed, writing from Glasgow after Sharp's return, could report that
the Protesters had, on the whole, been foiled, and chiefly by the
instrumentality of "that very worthy, pious, wise, and diligent young
man, Mr. James Sharp." But, on the other hand, the Protesters had
obtained some favours. As far as one can discern, Cromwell's judgment
as between the two parties of Scottish Kirkmen had come to be that
they were to be treated as a Tory majority and a pugnacious Whig
minority, whose differences would do no harm if they were both kept
under proper control, and that both together formed such a
Presbyterian body as might suitably possess, and yet divide, the
Church of Scotland. For, as has been remarked already, Cromwell, in
his conservatism, had come, on the whole, to be of opinion that the
national clergy of Scotland must be left massively Presbyterian, and
that it would not do to weld into the Scottish Establishment, as into
the English, Baptists, or even ordinary professing Independents, in
any considerable number. This would be bad news for those Scottish
Independents and Baptists who had naturally expected encouragement
under Cromwell's rule, but had already been disappointed. It would be
the common policy of the Resolutioners and Protesters to keep or
drive such erratic spirits out of the Kirk.[1]--Whether because the
long stay of the Scottish deputations in London had turned much of
Cromwell's thoughts towards Scotland, or simply because his own
anxiety for the "Propagation, of the Gospel" everywhere in his
dominions, had led his eyes at last to that portion of Great Britain,
we have now to record one of Cromwell's designs for Scotland worthy
of strong mark even in the total history of his Protectorate. On
Thursday, April 15, 1658, there being present In the Council the Lord
President Lawrence, Lord Richard Cromwell, the Earl of Mulgrave, and
Lords Meetwood, Wolseley, Sydenham, Lisle, Strickland and Jones, the
following draft was agreed to:--"Oliver, by the grace of God Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and
the Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging, To our
well-beloved Council in Scotland greeting: Whereas for about the
space of one hundred years last past the Gospel, blessed be God! hath
been plentifully preached in the Lowlands of the said nation, and
competent maintenance provided for the ministers there, yet little or
no care hath been taken for a very numerous people inhabiting in the
Highlands by the establishing of a ministry or maintenance,--where
the greatest part have scarce heard whether there be an Holy Ghost or
not, though there be some in several parts, as We are informed, that
hunger and thirst after the means of salvation,--and that there is a
concealed maintenance detained in unrighteousness, and diverted from
the right ends to the sole benefit of particular persons; And being
also informed that there hath been much revenue for many years
together in the late King's time and since concealed and detained
from Us by such persons as have no right or title thereunto, and that
some ministers that were acquainted with the Highland language have
in a late summer season visited those parts and been courteously used
by many professing there breathings after the Gospel: We do
therefore, in consideration of their sad condition, the great honour
and glory of God, and the good that may redound to the souls of many
poor ignorant creatures, Will and Require you, with all care,
industry and conveniency, to find out a way and means for the
Planting of the Gospel in those parts, and that, in pursuance thereof
and the better carrying on of so pious a work, our Barons of our
Exchequer in Scotland do search and find out _£600 per annum_
of concealed estates and revenues belonging to Us, or that may belong
to Us and our Successors, and issue forth and pay the same unto such
person or persons as by our said Council shall be nominated and
appointed, out of such concealed rents or any other concealed
revenues whatsoever, quarterly or half-yearly as there shall be
cause, by and with their assent and approbation, to the only use and
end aforesaid. For which so doing this shall be your and their
warrant. Witness Ourself at our Palace at Westminster the ---- day
---- 1658." This does not seem to have sufficed for his Highness; for
on Tuesday, May 4, the Council returned to the subject and prepared
another draft, beginning, "Forasmuch as We, taking into consideration
the sad condition of our People in Scotland living in the Highlands,
for want of the Preaching of the Gospel and Schools of Learning for
training up of youth in Learning and Civility, whereby the
inhabitants of those places in their lives and whole demeanour are
little different from the most savage heathens," and ending with
instructions that £1200 a year, or double the sum formerly proposed,
should be set apart out of still recoverable rents and revenues of
alienated Chaplaincies, Deaneries, &c. of the old Popish and
Episcopal Church of Scotland, and applied to the purposes of
preaching and education in the Highlands. The sum, in the Scotland of
that time, might go as far as £7000 or £8000 a year now, though in
England it would have been worth only about £4200 of present value.
Spent on an effective Gaelic mission of travelling pastors, and on a
few well-planted schools, it might have accomplished a good
deal.[2]--Since the beginning of the Protectorate there had been
some care in finding new funds for the Scottish Universities as well
as for the English. Principal Gillespie of Glasgow had procured a
grant for the University of that city (Vol. IV. p. 565), and
something had been done for University-reform in Aberdeen.
Accordingly, that Edinburgh might not complain, it was now agreed, at
a meeting of Council, July 15, 1658, his Highness himself present; to
issue an order beginning, "Know ye that We, taking into our
consideration the condition of the University of Edinburgh, and that
(being but of late foundation, viz. since the Reformation of Religion
in Scotland) the rents thereof are exceedingly small," and concluding
by putting £200 a year at the disposal of the Town Council of
Edinburgh, "being the founders and undoubted patrons of the said
University," to be applied for University purposes with the advice
and consent of the Masters and Regents. The gift, it appears, had
been promised to Principal Leighton, when he had been in London, some
time before, on one of his yearly journeys for his own bookish
purposes, and certainly neither as Resolutioner nor Protester. "Mr.
Leighton does nought to count of, but looks about him in his
chamber," is Baillie's characteristic fancy-sketch of Leighton when
he was back in Edinburgh and the £200 a year had become a certainty;
but he adds that the saint had shown more temper than usual at
finding that Mr. Sharp had contrived that £100 of the sum should go
to Mr. Alexander Dickson (son of the Resolutioner David Dickson) who
had been recently appointed to the Hebrew Professorship, and whom
Leighton did not like. Indeed Baillie makes merry over the
possibility that the poor £200 a year for Edinburgh might never be
forthcoming, any more than the richer "flim-flams" Mr. Gillespie had
obtained for Glasgow, though in _them_ he confessed a more
lively interest.[3]--Whether Scotland should ever actually handle the
new endowments for her Universities, or the more important £1200 a
year for the civilization of the Highlands, depended on the energy
and ability of his Highness's Scottish Council in finding out ways
and means. Broghill being still absent in England, but on the wing
for Ireland, and Lockhart and others being also absent, the most
active of the Councillors now left in Scotland, in association with
Monk, seem to have been Lord Keeper Desborough, Swinton of Swinton,
and Colonel Whetham. Since August 1656, by the Protector's orders,
_three_ had been a sufficient quorum of the Council. Monk, of
course, was the real Vice-Protector. Scotland had become his home. He
had lived for some years in the same house at Dalkeith, "pleasantly
seated in the midst of a park," occupying all his spare time "with
the pleasures of planting and husbandry"; he had buried his second
son, an infant, in a chapel near; and to all appearance he might
expect to spend the rest of his days where he was, a wealthy English
soldier-farmer naturalized among the Scots, acquiring estates among
them, and keeping them under quiet command.[4]
[Footnote 1: Baillie, III, 836-874 and 577-582; Blair's Life,
333-334; Council Order Books, Feb. 12 and March 5, 1656-7, and Sept.
18, 1657; and a pamphlet published in London in July 1659 with the
title "_The Hammer of Persecution, or the Mystery of Iniquity in
the Persecution of many good people in Scotland under the Government
of Oliver, late Lord Protector, and continued by others of the same
spirit, disclosed with the Remedies thereof, by Robt. Pitilloh,
Advocate._" The Persecution complained of by Mr. Pitilloh, a
Scottish lawyer who had left Presbyterianism, was simply the
discouragement under the Protectorate of such Scottish ministers as
had turned Independents and Baptists. The names of some such are
given: e.g. Mr. John Row, Principal of the College of Old Aberdeen;
Mr. Thomas Charters, Kilbride; Mr. John Menzies, Aberdeen; Mr.
Seaton, Old Aberdeen; Mr. Youngston, Durris; Mr. John Forbes,
Kincardine. "As soon as Oliver was lift up to the throne," says
the writer, "some of the Presbyterian faction were sent for; and, to
ingratiate himself with them, intimating tacitly that it was his
law no minister in Scotland should have allowance of a livelihood
but a National Presbyterian, he ordered that none should have
stipends as ministers ... but such as had certificates from some
four of a select party, being thirty in all, ... of the honest
Presbyterian party."]
[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates.]
[Footnote 3: Council Order Books of date, and Baillie, III. 356 and
365-366. Another interesting item of Scottish History under
Cromwell's rule may have a place here, though it belongs properly to
the First Protectorate. In the Council Order Books under date Feb.
17, 1656-7, is this minute:--"On consideration of a report from his
Highness's Attorney General, annexed to the draft of a Patent
prepared by his High Counsel learned, in pursuance of the Council's
order of the 13th of January last, according to the purport of an
agreement in writing presented to the Council under the hand of the
Provost of Edinburgh on behalf of that city and of Dr. Purves on
behalf of the Physicians of Scotland, the same being for erecting a
College of Physicians in Scotland: _Ordered_, That it be
offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his
Highness will be pleased to issue his warrant for Mr. Attorney
General to prepare a Patent for his Highness's signature according
to the said Draft."]
[Footnote 4: Council Order Books, Aug. 14, 1656.]
Next to the Propagation of the Gospel by an Established Ministry
everywhere, the fixed idea of Cromwell for his Home-Government, as we
have had again and again to explain, was toleration of all varieties
of religious opinion. Under this head little that is new presents
itself in the part of his Protectorate with which we are now
concerned. The Anti-Trinitarian Mr. John Biddle, who had been in
custody in the Isle of Scilly since Oct. 1655 (ante p. 66), had moved
for a writ of habeas corpus, and had been brought to London,
apparently with an intention on Cromwell's part to set him at
liberty. Nor had Cromwell lost sight of the poor demented Quaker,
James Nayler. There is extant a long and confidential letter to his
Highness from his private secretary Mr. William Malyn, giving an
account of a visit Malyn had paid to Nayler in Bridewell expressly by
his Highness's command. It is to the effect that he had found Nayler
well enough in bodily health, but so mulishly obstinate or mad that
he could not be coaxed in a long interview to speak even a single
word, and that therefore, though Malyn did not like to "dissuade" his
Highness from "a work of tenderness and mercy," he could hardly yet
advise Nayler's release, but would carefully apply the money he had
received from his Highness for Nayler's comfort. For the Quakers
generally there was, we fear, no more specific protection than
Cromwell's good-nature when a case of cruelty was distinctly brought
within his cognisance. What shall we say, however, of one order or
intention of Cromwell's Council in June 1658, which, if not against
liberty of conscience in the general sense, was decidedly retrograde
in respect of the specific liberty of the press? On the 22nd of that
month, nine members being present, though not his Highness, it was
agreed, on a report by Mr. Comptroller, i.e. by Lord Jones, from a
Committee that had been appointed on the subject, to recommend to his
Highness to issue a warrant with this preamble, "Whereas there are
divers good laws, statutes, acts, and ordinances of Parliament in
force, which were heretofore made and published against the printing
of unlicensed, seditious, and scandalous books and pamphlets, and for
the better regulating of printing, wherein several provisions are
contained, sufficient to prevent the designs of persons disaffected
to the State and Government of this Commonwealth, who have assumed to
themselves and do continually take upon them a licentious boldness to
write, print, publish, and disperse many dangerous, seditious,
blasphemous, Popish, and scandalous pamphlets, books, and papers, to
the high dishonour of God, the scorn and contempt of the Laws and of
all good Order and Government; and forasmuch as it nearly concerns
Us, in respect of the public peace and safety, to take care for a due
execution of the said laws." What followed was a special charge to
the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company, together with
Henry Hills and John Field, his Highness's Printers, to see to the
strict enforcement in future of the restrictions of certain cited
Press Acts,--to wit, the ordinance of the Long Parliament of June 14,
1643 (that against which Milton had written his _Areopagitica_),
the similar ordinance of the same Parliament of date Sept. 28, 1647,
the Act of the Rump Parliament of Sept. 20, 1649 (Bradshaw's Press
Act of the first year of the Commonwealth), and the renewal of the
same Jan. 7, 1652-3. Had this been all, one might have inferred
nothing more than one of those occasional panics about Press
licentiousness from the recurrence of which even Milton's reasoning
had never been able to free the Government with which he was
connected. But at the same meeting it was referred to Lord Fleetwood,
Lord Wolseley, Lord Pickering, Lord Jones, Lord Desborough, Lord
Viscount Lisle, and Lord Strickland, or to any two of them, "to
consider of fit persons to be added for licensing of books and to
report the names of such persons to the Council." This was distinctly
retrogressive; and the regret of Milton must have been none the less
because four of the Committee that were to find the new licensers
were men he had named in his _Defensio Secunda_ as heroes of the
Commonwealth, and because, as appears from a marginal jotting to the
minute as it stands in the Council Order Books, the man thought of at
once for one of the new licensers, or as the person fittest to be
first consulted in the business, was Marchamont Needham. After all,
it may have been, like some of the previous movements for
press-regulation, only a push from Paternoster Row in defence of the
legitimate book-trade, and the main intention of the Council itself
may have been against pamphlets like _Killing no Murder_ or
publications of the indecent order.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates, and Nickolis's _Milton
State Papers_, 143-144 (the last for Malyn's Letter about Nayler).
For previous Press Acts referred to by the Council, see ante Vol.
III. 266-271, and Vol. IV. 116-118.]
O how stable and grand seemed the Protectorate in the month of July
1658! Rebellion at home in all its varieties quashed once more, and
now, as it might seem, for ever; the threatened invasion of the
Spaniards and Charles Stuart dissipated into ridicule; a footing
acquired on the Continent, and 6000 Englishmen stationed there in
arms; Foreign Powers, with Louis XIV. at their head, obeisant to the
very ground whenever they turned their gaze towards the British
Islands, and dreading the next bolt from the Protector's hands; those
hands evidently toying with several new bolts and poising them
towards the parts of Europe for which they were intended; great
schemes, besides, for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies,
in that inventive brain! All this, we say, in July 1658, by which
time also it was known that the Protector, so far from fearing to
face a new Parliament, was ready to call one and would take all the
chances. His immediate necessity, of course, was money. His second
Parliament, at the close of its first and loyal session in June 1657,
had provided ordinary supplies for three years; but there had been no
new revenue-arrangements in the short second session, and the current
expenses for the Flanders expedition, the various Embassies, the
Court, and the whole conduct of the Government, far outran the voted
income. The pay of the armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland was
greatly in arrears; on all hands there were straits for money; and,
whatever might be done by expedients and ingenuity meanwhile, the
effective extrication could only be by a Parliament. Not for
subsidies only, however, was Cromwell willing to resort again to that
agency, with all its perils. He believed that, in consequence of what
had passed since the Dissolution in January, any Parliament that
should now meet him would be in a different mood towards himself from
that he had recently encountered. Then might there not be proposals,
in which he and such a Parliament might agree, for constitutional
changes in advance of the Articles of the _Petition and Advice_,
though in the same direction of orderliness and settled and stately
rule? Was there not wide regret among the civilians that he had not
accepted the Kingship; had his refusal of it been really wise; might
not that question be reopened? With that question might there not go
the question of the succession, whether by nomination for one life
only as was now fixed, or by perpetual nomination, or by a return to
the hereditary and dynastic principle which the lawyers and the
civilians thought the best? Nor could the Second House of Parliament
remain the vague thing it had been so far fashioned. It must be
amended in the points in which its weakness had been proved; and all
the evidence hitherto was that it must be made truly and formally a
House of Lords, if even with the reinstitution of a peerage as part
and parcel of the legislative system. Whether such a peerage should
be hereditary or for life only might be in doubt; but there were
symptoms that, even if the Legislative Peerage should be only for
life, Cromwell had convinced himself of the utility, for general
purposes, of at least a Social Peerage with, hereditary rank and
titles. In his First Protectorate he had made knights only; in his
Second he created a few baronets. Nay, besides favouring the courtesy
appellation of "lords," as applied to all who had sat in the late
Upper House and to the great officers of State, he had added at least
two peers of his own making to the hereditary peerage as it had come
down from the late reign.[1]
[Footnote 1: In continuation of a former note giving a list of the
Knighthoods of Cromwell's First Protectorate so far as I have
ascertained them (ante p. 303), here is a list of the Knighthoods of
the Second:--William Wheeler (Aug. 26, 1657); Edward Ward, of Norfolk
(Nov. 2, 1657); Alderman Thomas Andrews (Nov. 14, 1657); Colonel
Matthew Tomlinson (Nov. 25, 1657, in Dublin, by Lord Henry Cromwell
as Lord Deputy for Ireland); Alderman Thomas Foot, Alderman Thomas
Atkins, and Colonel John Hewson (all Dec. 5, 1657); James Drax, Esq.,
a Barbadoes merchant (Dec. 31, 1657); Henry Bickering and Philip
Twistleton (Feb. 1, 1657-8); John Lenthall, Esq., son of Speaker
Lenthall (March 9, 1657-8); Alderman Chiverton and Alderman John
Ireton (March 22, 1857-8); Colonel Henry Jones (July 17, 1658, for
distinguished bravery at the siege of Dunkirk).-Baronetcies conferred
by Cromwell were the following:--John Read, of Hertfordshire (Juae
25. 1657); the Hon. John Claypole, father of Lord Claypole (July 20,
1657); Thomas Chamberlain (Oct. 6, 1657); Thomas Beaumont, of
Leicestershire (March 5, 1657-8); Colonel Henry Ingoldsby, John
Twistleton, Esq., and Henry Wright, Esq., son of the physician Dr.
Wright (all April 10, 1658); Griffith Williams, of Carnarvonshire
(May 28, 1658); Attorney General Edmund Prideaux and Solicitor
General William Ellis (Aug. 13, 1668); William Wyndham, Esq., co.
Somerset (Aug. 28, 1658). The Baronetcies, being rare, seem to have
been much prized; and that of Henry Ingoldsby raised jealousies (see
letter of Henry Cromwell in Thurloe, VII. 57).--_Peerages_
conferred by Cromwell were not likely, any more than his Knighthoods
and Baronetcies, to be paraded by their possessors after the
Restoration. But Cromwell's favourite, Colonel Charles Howard, a
scion of the great Norfolk Howards, was raised to the dignity of
Viscount Howard of Morpeth and Baron Gilsland in Cumberland;
Cromwell's relative, Edmund Dunch, of Little Wittenham, Berks, was
created Baron Burnell, April 20, 1658; and Cromwell, just before his
death, made, or wanted to make, Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount.]
As early as April the new Parliament had been thought of, and since
June there had been a select committee of nine, precognoscing the
chances, considering the questions to be brought up, and feeling in
every way the public pulse. The nine so employed were Lords
Fleetwood, Fiennes, Desborough, Pickering, Philip Jones, Whalley,
Cooper, and Goffe, and Mr, Secretary Thurloe. There are a few
glimpses of their consultations in the Thurloe correspondence, where
also there is a hint of some hope of the compliance at last even of
such old Republicans as Vane and Ludlow. But July 1658 had come, and
no one yet knew when the Parliament would meet. It could not be
expected then before the end of the year.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 99, 151-152, et seq.]
Before that time Oliver Cromwell was to be out of the world. Though
but in his sixtieth year, and with his prodigious powers of will,
intellect, heart, and humour, unimpaired visibly in the least atom,
his frame had for some time been giving way under the pressure of his
ceaseless burden. For a year or two his handwriting, though statelier
and more deliberate than at first, had been singularly tremulous, and
to those closest about him there had been other signs of physical
breaking-up. Not till late in July, however, or early in August, was
there any serious cause for alarm, and then in consequence of the
terrible effects upon his Highness of his close attendance on the
death-bed of his second daughter, the much-loved Lady Claypole. She
had been lingeringly ill for some time, of a most painful internal
disease, aggravated by the death of her youngest boy, Oliver. Hampton
Court had received her as a dying invalid, tortured by "frequent and
long convulsion-fits"; and here, through a great part of July, the
fond father had been hanging about her, broken-hearted and unfit for
business. For his convenience the Council had transferred its
meetings from Whitehall to Hampton Court; but, though he was present
at one there on July 15, he avoided one on July 20, another on July
22, and a third on July 27. On the 29th, which was the fifth meeting
at Hampton Court, he did look in again and take his place. Next day
Lord and Lady Falconbridge arrived at Hampton Court, where already,
besides the Protestor and the Lady Protectress, there were Lord
Richard Cromwell, the widowed Lady Frances, and others of the family,
all round the dying sufferer. After that meeting of the Council of
July 29 which he had managed to attend, and an intervening meeting at
Whitehall without him, the Council was again at Hampton Court on
Thursday the 5th of August. At this meeting one of the resolutions
was "That Mr. Secretary be desired to make a collection of such
injuries received by the English from the Dutch as have come to his
cognisance, and to offer the same to the Council on this day
seven-night." This was a very important resolution, significant of a
dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Dutch, and a desire to call
them to account again, which had for some time been growing in
Cromwell's mind; and there can be no doubt that he had suggested
the subject to the Council. But his Highness did not appear in the
meeting himself, and next day Lady Claypole lay dead. Before her
death his grief had passed into an indefinite illness, described as
"of the gout and other distempers"; and, though he was able to come
to London on the 10th of August, on which night Lady Claypole's
remains were interred in a little vault that had been prepared for
them in Henry VIIth's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, he returned to
Hampton Court greatly the worse. But, after four or five days of
confinement, attended by his physicians--on one of which days (the
13th) Attorney General Prideaux and Solicitor General Ellis were made
baronets--he was out again for an hour on the 17th; and thence till
Friday the 20th he seemed so much better that Thurloe and others
thought the danger past. From the public at large the fact of his
illness had been hitherto concealed as much as possible; and hence it
may have been that on two or three of those days of convalescence he
showed himself as usual, riding with his life-guards in Hampton Court
Park. It was on one of them, most probably Friday the 20th, that
George Fox had that final meeting with him which he describes in his
Journal. The good but obtrusive Quaker had been writing letters of
condolence and mystical religious advice to Lady Claypole in her
illness, and had recently sent one of mixed condolence and rebuke to
Cromwell himself; and now, not knowing of Cromwell's own illness, he
had come to have a talk with him about the sufferings of the Friends.
"Before I came to him, as he rode at the head of his life-guard,"
says Fox, "I saw and felt a waft of death go forth, against him; and,
when I came to him, he looked like a dead man." Fox, nevertheless,
had his conversation with the Protector, who told him to come again,
but does not seem to have mentioned the inquiry he had been making,
through his secretary Mr. Malyn, about the state of Fox's
fellow-Quaker, poor James Nayler. Next day, Saturday, Aug. 21, when
Fox went to Hampton Court Palace to keep his appointment, he could
not be admitted. Harvey, the groom of the bedchamber, told him that
his Highness was very ill, with his physicians about him, and must
be kept quiet. That morning his distemper had developed itself
distinctly into "an ague"; which ague proved, within the next few
days, to be of the kind called by the physicians "a bastard tertian,"
i.e. an ague with the cold and hot shivering fits recurring most
violently every third day, but with the intervals also troublesome.
Yet it was on this first day of his ague that he signed a warrant for
a patent to make Bulstrode Whitlocke a Viscount. Whitlocke himself,
though he afterwards declined the honour as inconvenient, is precise
as to the date. The physicians thinking the London air better for the
malady than that of Hampton Court, his Highness was removed to
Whitehall on Tuesday the 24th. That was one of the intervals of his
fever, and he seems to have come up easily enough in his coach, and
to have been quite able to take an interest in what he found going on
at Whitehall. Six days before (Aug. 18) the Duke of Buckingham, who
had been for some time in London undisturbed, living in his mansion
of York House with his recently wedded wife, and with Lord and Lady
Fairfax in their society, had been apprehended on the high-road some
miles from Canterbury; and, whether on the old grounds, or from new
suspicions, the Council, by a warrant issued on the 19th, doubtless
with Cromwell's sanction intimated from Hampton Court, had committed
him to the Tower. On the very day of Cromwell's return to Whitehall
this business of the Duke was again before the Council, in
consequence of a petition from the young Duchess that he might be
permitted to remain at York House on sufficient security. Fairfax
himself had gone to Whitehall to urge his daughter's request and to
tender the security, and Cromwell, though unable to be in the
Council-room, gave him a private interview. According to the story in
the Fairfax family, it must have been an unpleasant one. Cromwell
could be stern on such a subject even at such a time and to his old
commander, and so Fairfax "turned abruptly from him in the gallery at
Whitehall, cocking his hat, and throwing his cloak under his arm, as
he used to do when he was angry." Nor was this the last piece of
public business of which the Protector, though never more in the
Council-room, must have been directly cognisant. Whitlocke says he
visited him and was kept to dine with him on the 26th, and that he
was then able to discourse on business; but, as Whitlocke makes
Hampton Court the place, there must be an error as to the day. The
last baronetcy he conferred was made good on Saturday the 28th, four
days after the interview with Fairfax; and even after that, between
his fever-fits, he kept some grasp of affairs, and received and sent
messages. But that Saturday of the last baronetcy was a day of marked
crisis. The ague had then changed into a "double tertian," with two
fits in the twenty-four hours, both extremely weakening. So Sunday
passed, with prayers in all the churches; and then came that
extraordinary Monday (Aug. 30, 1658) which lovers of coincidence have
taken care to remember as the day of most tremendous hurricane that
ever blew over London and England. From morning to night the wind
raged and howled, emptying the streets, unroofing houses, tearing up
trees in the parks, foundering ships at sea, and taking even Flanders
and the coasts of France within its angry whirl. The storm was felt,
within England, as far as Lincolnshire, where, in the vicinity of an
old manor-house, a boy of fifteen years of age, named Isaac Newton,
was turning it to account, as he afterwards remembered, by jumping
first with the wind, and then against it, and computing its force by
the difference of the distances. Through all this storm, as it
shuddered round Whitehall, shaking the doors and windows, the
sovereign patient had lain on, passing from fit to fit, but talking
in the intervals with the Lady Protectress or with his physicians,
while Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Sterry, or some other of the preachers
that were in attendance, went and came between the chamber and an
adjoining room. A certain belief that he would recover, which he had
several times before expressed to the Lady Protectress and others,
had not yet left him, and had communicated itself to the preachers as
an assurance that their prayers were heard. Writing to Henry Cromwell
at nine o'clock that night, Thurloe could say, "The doctors are yet
hopeful that he may struggle through it, though their hopes are
mingled with much fear." Even the next day, Tuesday, Aug. 31,
Cromwell was still himself, still consciously the Lord Protector.
Through the storm of the preceding day Ludlow had made a journey to
London from Essex on family-business, beaten back in the morning by a
wind against which two horses could not make way, but contriving late
at night to push on as far as Epping. "By this means," he says, "I
arrived not at Westminster till Tuesday about noon, when, passing by
Whitehall, notice was immediately given to Cromwell that I was come
to town. Whereupon he sent for Lieutenant General Fleet wood, and
ordered him to enquire concerning the reasons of my coming at such
haste and at such a time." If Cromwell could attend to such a matter
that day, he must have been able also to prompt the resolution of his
Council in Whitehall the same day in the case of the Duke of
Buckingham. It was that the Duke, on account of his health, might be
removed from the Tower to Windsor Castle, but must continue in
confinement. At the end of the day, Fleetwood, writing to Henry
Cromwell, reported, "The Lord is pleased to give some little reviving
this evening: after few slumbering sleeps, his pulse is better." As
near as can be guessed, it was that same night that Cromwell himself
uttered the well-known short prayer, the words of which, or as nearly
as possible the very words, were preserved by the pious care of his
chamber-attendant Harvey. It is to the same authority that we owe the
most authentic record of the religious demeanour of the Protector
from the beginning of his illness. Very beautifully and simply Harvey
tells us of his "holy expressions," his fervid references to
Scripture texts, and his repetitions of some texts in particular,
such repetitions "usually being very weighty and with great vehemency
of spirit." One of them was "It is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God." Three times he repeated this; but the texts
of promise and of Christian triumph had all along been more
frequently on his lips. All in all, his single short prayer, which
Harvey places "two or three days before his end," may be read as the
summary of all that we need to know now of the dying Puritan in these
eternal respects. "Lord," he muttered, "though I am a miserable and
wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace, and I
may, I will, come to Thee. For Thy people, Thou hast made me, though
very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee
service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though
others wish and would be glad of my death. But, Lord, however Thou
dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them
consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to
deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of
Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much upon Thy
instruments to depend more upon Thyself; pardon such as desire to
trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too;
and pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's
sake; and give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure." Wednesday,
Sept. 1, passes unmarked, unless it may be for the delivery to the
Lady Protectress, in her watch over Cromwell, of a letter, dated that
day, and addressed to her and her children, from the Quaker Edward
Burrough. It was long and wordy, but substantially an assurance that
the Lord had sent this affliction upon the Protector's house on
account of the unjust sufferings of the Quakers. "Will not their
sufferings lie upon you? For many hundreds have suffered cruel and
great things, and some the loss of life (though not by, yet in the
name of, the Protector); and about a hundred at this present day lie
in holes, and dungeons, and prisons, up and down the nation." The
letter, we may suppose, was not read to Cromwell, and the Wednesday
went by. On Thursday, Sept. 2, there was an unusually full
Council-meeting close to his chamber, at which order was given for
the removal of Lords Lauderdale and Sinclair from Windsor Castle to
Warwick Castle, to make more room at Windsor for the Duke of
Buckingham. That night Harvey sat up with his Highness and again
noted some of his sayings. One was "Truly, God is good; indeed He is;
He will not--" He did not complete the sentence. "His speech failed
him," says Harvey; "but, as I apprehended, it was 'He will not leave
me.' This saying, that God was good, he frequently used all along,
and would speak it with much cheerfulness and fervour of spirit in
the midst of his pain. Again he said, 'I would be willing to live to
be farther serviceable to God and His people; but my work is done.'
He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often to
himself. And, there being something to drink offered him, he was
desired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep; unto which he
answered, 'It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is
to make what haste I can to be gone.' Afterwards, towards morning,
using divers holy expressions, implying much inward consolation and
peace, among the rest he spake some exceeding self-debasing words,
annihilating and judging himself." This is the last. The next day,
Friday, was his twice victorious Third of September, the anniversary
of Dunbar and Worcester. That morning he was speechless; and, though
the prayers in Whitehall, and in all London and the suburbs, did not
cease for him, people in the houses and passers in the streets knew
that hope was over and Oliver at the point of death. For several days
there had been cautious approaches to him on the subject of the
nomination of his successor, and either on the stormy Monday or later
that matter had been settled somehow.[1]
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from July 8 to Sept. 2, 1658,
giving minutes of fifteen meetings at Whitehall or Hampton Court,
Cromwell present at the two first, viz. July 8 (Whitehall), July 15
(Hampton Court), and at the sixth, viz. July 29 (Hampton Court), but
at no other; Thurloe, VII. 309, 320, 323, 340, 344, 354-356,
362-364, 366-367, 369-370; _A Collection of Several Passages
concerning his late Highness, Oliver Cromwell, in the Time of his
Sickness_ (June 9, 1659, "London, Printed for Robert Ibbetson,
dwelling in Smithfield, near Hosier Lane"); _Cromwelliana_,
174-178 (including an abridgment of the last tract); Whitlocke, IV.
334-335; Markham's Life of Fairfax, 373-374; Ludlow, 610; Godwin, IV.
564-575; Carlyle, III. 367-376 (which may well be read again and
again); Sewel's History of the Quakers, 1. 242-245; Life of Newton by
Sir David Brewster (1860), I. 14.]
CHAPTER II.
MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE SECOND PROTECTORATE.
MILTON STILL IN OFFICE: LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, WITH MILTON'S
OPINION OF SALLUST: LETTERS TO YOUNG RANELAGH AND HENRY OLDENBURG AT
SAUMUR: MORUS IN NEW CIRCUMSTANCES: ELEVEN MOBE STATE-LETTERS OF
MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. CI.-CXI.): ANDREW MARVELL BROUGHT IN
AS ASSISTANT FOREIGN SECRETARY AT LAST (SEPT. 1657): JOHN DRYDEN NOW
ALSO IN THE PROTECTOR'S EMPLOYMENT: BIRTH OF MILTON'S DAUGHTER BY HIS
SECOND WIFE: SIX MORE STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON (NOS. CXII.-CXIII.):
ANOTHER LETTER TO MR. HENRY DE BRASS, AND ANOTHER TO PETER HEIMBACH:
COMMENT ON THE LATTER: DEATHS OF MILTON'S SECOND WIFE AND HER CHILD:
HIS TWO NEPHEWS, EDWARD AND JOHN PHILLIPS, AT THIS DATE: MILTON'S
LAST SIXTEEN STATE-LETTERS FOR OLIVER CROMWELL (NOS.
CXVIII.-CXXXIII.), INCLUDING TWO TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS OF SWEDEN. TWO
ON A NEW ALARM OF A PERSECUTION OF THE PIEDMONTESE PROTESTANTS, AND
SEVERAL TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: IMPORTANCE OF THIS LAST
GROUP OF THE STATE-LETTERS, AND REVIEW OF THE WHOLE SERIES OF
MILTON'S PERFORMANCES FOR CROMWELL: LAST DIPLOMATIC INCIDENTS OF THE
PROTECTORATE, AND ANDREW MARVELL IN CONNEXION WITH THEM: INCIDENTS
OF MILTON'S LITERARY LIFE IN THIS PERIOD: YOUNG GUNTZER'S
_DISSERTATIO_ AND YOUNG KECK'S PHALAECIANS: MILTON'S EDITION OF
RALEIGH'S _CABINET COUNCIL_: RESUMPTION OF THE OLD DESIGN OF
_PARADISE LOST_ AND ACTUAL COMMENCEMENT OF THE POEM: CHANGE FROM
THE DRAMATIC POEM TO THE EPIC: SONNET IN MEMORY OF HIS DECEASED
WIFE.
Through the Second Protectorate Milton remained in office just as
before. He was not, however, as had been customary before at the
commencement of each new period of his Secretaryship, sworn in
afresh. Thurloe was sworn in, both as General Secretary and as full
Councillor, and Scobell and Jessop were sworn in as Clerks;[1] but we
hear of no such ceremony in the case of Milton. His Latin
Secretaryship, we infer, was now regarded as an excrescence from the
Whitehall establishment, rather than an integral part of it. An oath
may have been administered to him privately, or his old general
engagement may have sufficed.
[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, July 13 and 14, 1657.]
Our first trace of Milton after the new inauguration of Cromwell is
in one of his Latin Familiar Epistles, addressed to some young
foreigner in London, of whom I know nothing more than may be learnt
from the letter itself:--
"To the Very Distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS.
"I see, Sir, that you, unlike most of our modern youth in their
surveys of foreign lands, travel rightly and wisely, after the
fashion of the old philosophers, not for ordinary youthful quests,
but with a view to the acquisition of fuller erudition from every
quarter. Yet, as often as I look at what you write, you appear to
me to be one who has come among strangers not so much to receive
knowledge as to impart it to others, to barter good merchandise
rather than to buy it. I wish indeed it were as easy for me to
assist and promote in every way those excellent studies of yours as
it is pleasant and gratifying to have such help asked by a person
of your uncommon talents.
"As for the resolution you say you have taken to write to me and
request my answers towards solving those difficulties about which
for many ages writers of Histories seem to have been in the dark,
I have never assumed anything of the kind as within my powers, nor
should I dare now to do so. In the matter of Sallust, which you
refer to me, I will say freely, since you wish me to tell plainly
what I do think, that I prefer Sallust to any other Latin
historian; which also was the almost uniform opinion of the
Ancients. Your favourite Tacitus has his merits; but the greatest
of them, in my judgment, is that he imitated Sallust with all his
might. As far as I can gather from what you write, it appears that
the result of my discourse with you personally on this subject has
been that you are now nearly of the same mind with me respecting
that most admirable writer; and hence it is that you ask me, with
reference to what he has said, in the introduction to his
_Catilinarian War_--as to the extreme difficulty of writing
History, from the obligation that the expressions should be
proportional to the deeds--by what method I think a writer of
History might attain that perfection. This, then, is my view: that
he who would write of worthy deeds worthily must write with mental
endowments and experience of affairs not less than were in the doer
of the same, so as to be able with equal mind to comprehend and
measure even the greatest of them, and, when he has comprehended
them, to relate them distinctly and gravely in pure and chaste
speech. That he should do so in ornate style, I do not much care
about; for I want a Historian, not an Orator. Nor yet would I have
frequent maxims, or criticisms on the transactions, prolixly thrown
in, lest, by interrupting the thread of events, the Historian
should invade the office of the Political Writer: for, if the
Historian, in explicating counsels and narrating facts, follows
truth most of all, and not his own fancy or conjecture, he fulfils
his proper duty. I would add also that characteristic of Sallust,
in respect of which he himself chiefly praised Cato,--to be able to
throw off a great deal in few words: a thing which I think no one
can do without the sharpest judgment and a certain temperance at
the same time. There are many in whom you will not miss either
elegance of style or abundance of information; but for conjunction
of brevity with abundance, i.e. for the despatch of much in few
words, the chief of the Latins, in my judgment, is Sallust. Such
are the qualities that I think should be in the Historian that
would hope to make his expressions proportional to the facts he
records.
"But why all this to you, who are sufficient, with the talent you
have, to make it all out, and who, if you persevere in the road you
have entered, will soon be able to consult no one more learned than
yourself. That you do persevere, though you require no one's advice
for that, yet, that I may not seem to have altogether failed in
replying correspondingly with the value you are pleased to put upon
my authority with you, is my earnest exhortation and suggestion.
Farewell; and all success to your real worth, and your zeal for
acquiring wisdom.
"Westminster: July 15, 1657."
Henry Oldenburg, and his pupil Richard Jones, _alias_ young
Ranelagh, had left Oxford in April or May 1657, after about a year's
stay there, and had gone abroad on a tour which was to extend over
more than four years. It was an arrangement for the farther education
of young Ranelagh in the way most satisfactory to his mother, Lady
Ranelagh, and perhaps also to his uncle, Robert Boyle, neither of
whom seems to have cared much for the ordinary University routine;
and particulars had been settled by correspondence between Oldenburg
at Oxford and Lady Ranelagh in Ireland.[1] Young Ranelagh, I find,
took with him as his servant a David Whitelaw, who had been servant
to Durie in his foreign travels: "my man, David Whitelaw," as Durie
calls him.[2] The ever-convenient Hartlib was to manage the
conveyance of letters to the travellers, wherever they might be.[3]
[Footnote 1: Letter of Oldenburg to Boyle, dated April! 5, 1657,
given in Boyle's Works (V. 299).]
[Footnote 2: Letters of Durie in _Vaughan's Protectorate_ (II.
174 and 195).]
[Footnote 3: Letter of Oldenburg in Boyle's Works (V. 301).]
They went, pretty directly, to Saumur in the west of France, a
pleasant little town, with a college, a library, &c., which they had
selected for their first place of residence, rather than Paris. An
Italian master was procured to teach young Jones "something of
practical geometry and fortification"; and, for the rest, Oldenburg
himself continued to superintend his studies, directing them a good
deal in that line of physical and economical observation which might
be supposed congenial to a nephew of Boyle, and which had become
interesting to himself. "As for us here," wrote Oldenburg to Boyle
from Saumur, Sept. 8, 1657, "we are, through the goodness of God, in
perfect health; and, your nephew having spent these two or three
months we have been here very well and in more than ordinary
diligence, I cannot but give him some relaxation in taking a view of
this province of Anjou during this time of vintage; which, though it
be a very tempting one to a young appetite, yet shall, I hope, by a
careful watchfulness, prove unprejudicial to his health."[1] A good
while before Oldenburg wrote this letter to Boyle both he and his
pupil had written to Milton, and Milton's replies had already been
received. They are dated on the same day, but we shall put that to
young Ranelagh first. It will be seen that Oldenburg must have had a
sight of it from his pupil before he wrote the above to Boyle:--
[Footnote 1: Boyle's Works, V. 299.]
"To the noble youth, RICHARD JONES.
"That you made out so long a journey without inconvenience, and
that, spurning the allurements of Paris, you have so quickly
reached your present place of residence, where you can enjoy
literary leisure and the society of learned persons, I am both
heartily glad, and set down to the credit of your disposition.
There, so far as you keep yourself in bounds, you will be in
harbour; elsewhere you would have to beware the Syrtes, the Rocks,
and the songs of the Sirens. All the same I would not have you
thirst too much after the Saumur vintage, with which you think to
delight yourself, unless it be also your intention to dilute that
juice of Bacchus, more than a fifth part, with the freer cup of the
Muses. But to such a course, even if I were silent, you have a
first-rate adviser; by listening to whom you will indeed consult
best for your own good, and cause great joy to your most excellent
mother, and a daily growth of her love for you. Which that you may
accomplish you ought every day to petition Almighty God, Farewell;
and see that you return to us as good as possible, and as cultured
as possible in good arts. That will be to me, beyond others, a most
delightful result.
"Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657."
The letter to Oldenburg contains matter of more interest:--
"To HENRY OLDENBURG.
"I am glad you have arrived safe at Saumur, the goal of your
travel, as I believe. You are not mistaken in thinking the news
would be very agreeable to me in particular, who both love you for
your own merit, and know the cause of your undertaking the journey
to be so honourable and praiseworthy.
"As to the news you have heard, that so infamous a priest has been
called to instruct so illustrious a church, I had rather any one
else had heard it in Charon's boat than you in that of Charenton;
for it is mightily to be feared that whoever thinks to get to
heaven under the auspices of so foul a guide will be a whole world
awry in his calculations. Woe to that church (only God avert the
omen!) where such ministers please, mainly by tickling the
ears,--ministers whom the Church, if she would truly be called
_Reformed_, would more fitly cast out than desire to bring
in.
"In not having given copies of my writings to any one that does not
ask for them, you have done well and discreetly, not in my opinion
alone, but also in that of Horace:--
"Err not by zeal for us, nor on our books
Draw hatred by too vehement care.
"A learned man, a friend of mine, spent last summer at Saumur. He
wrote to me that the book was in demand in those parts; I sent only
one copy; he wrote back that some of the learned to whom he had
lent it had been pleased with it hugely. Had I not thought I should
be doing a thing agreeable to them, I should have spared you
trouble and myself expense. But,
"If chance my load of paper galls your back,
Off with, it now, rather than in the end
Dash down the panniers cursing.
"To our Lawrence, as you bade me, I have given greetings in your
name. For the rest, there is nothing I should wish you to do or
care for more than see that yourself and your pupil get on in good
health, and that you return to us as soon as possible with all your
wishes fulfilled.
"Westminster: Aug. 1, 1657."
The books mentioned in the third paragraph as having been sent by
Milton to Saumur in Oldenburg's charge must have been copies of the
_Defensio Secunda_ and of the _Pro Se Defensio_. The person
mentioned with such loathing in the second paragraph was the hero of
those performances, Morus. The paragraph requires explanation. For
Morus, uncomfortable at Amsterdam, and every day under some fresh
discredit there, a splendid escape had at length presented itself. He
had received an invitation to be one of the ministers of the
Protestant church of Charenton, close to Paris. This church of
Charenton was indeed the main Protestant church of Paris itself and
the most flourishing representative of French Protestantism
generally. For the French law then obliged Protestants to have their
places of worship at some distance from the cities and towns in which
they resided, and the village of Charenton was the ecclesiastical
rendezvous of the chief Protestant nobility and professional men of
the capital, some of whom, in the capacity of lay-elders, were
associated in the consistory of the church with the ministers or
pastors. Of these, in the beginning of 1657, there had been five, all
men of celebrity in the French Protestant world--viz. Mestrezat,
Faucheur, Drelincourt, Daillé, and Gaches; but the deaths of the two
first in April and May of that year had occasioned vacancies, and it
was to fill up one of these vacancies that Morus had been invited
from Amsterdam. Oldenburg, as we understand, had heard this piece of
news, when passing through Paris on his way to Saumur, probably in
June. He had heard it, seemingly, on board the Charenton boat--i.e.
as we guess, on board the boat plying on the Marne between Paris and
Charenton. Hence the punning phraseology of Milton's reply. He would
rather that such a piece of news had been heard by anybody on board
_Charon's/_ boat than by Oldenburg on board the _Charenton_
wherry. Altogether the idea that Morus should be admitted as one of
the pastors of the most important Protestant church in France was, we
can see, horrible to him; and he hoped the calamity might yet be
averted.--For the time it seemed likely that it would be. There had
been ample enough knowledge in Paris of the coil of scandals about
the character of Morus; and copies of Milton's two Anti-Morus
pamphlets had been in circulation there long before Oldenburg took
with him into France his new bundle of them for distribution.
Accordingly, though there was a strong party for Morus, disbelieving
the scandals, and anxious to have him for the Charenton church on
account of his celebrity as a preacher, there were dissentients among
the congregation and even in the consistory itself. One hears of
Sieur Papillon and Sieur Beauchamp, Parisian advocates, and elders in
the church, as heading the opposition to the call. The business of
the translation of Morus from Amsterdam was, therefore, no easy one.
In any case it would have brought those Protestant church courts of
France that had to sanction the admission of Morus at Charenton into
communication about him with those courts of the Walloon Church in
Holland from whose jurisdiction he was to be removed; and one can
imagine the peculiar complications that would arise in a case so
extraordinary and involving so much inquiry and discussion. In fact,
for more than two years, the business of the translation of Morus
from Amsterdam to Paris was to hang notoriously between the Dutch
Walloon Synods, who in the main wanted to disgrace and depose him
before they had done with him, and the French Provincial Synods, now
roused in his behalf, and willing in the main to receive him back
into his native country as a man not without his faults, but more
sinned against than sinning.[1]--And so for the present (Aug. 1657)
Morus was still in his Amsterdam professorship, longing to be in
France, but uncertain whether his call thither would hold. How the
case ended we shall see in time. Meanwhile it is quite apparent that
Milton was not only willing, but anxious, that _his_ influence
should be imported into the affair, to turn the scale, if possible,
against the man he detested. As he had not heard of the call of Morus
to Charenton till the receipt of Oldenburg's letter, his motives
originally for despatching a bundle of his Anti-Morus pamphlets into
France with Oldenburg can have been only general; but one gathers
from his reply to Oldenburg that he thought the pamphlets might now
be of use specifically in the business of the proposed translation.
Indeed, one can discern a tone of disappointment in Milton's letter
with Oldenburg's report of what he had been able to do with the
pamphlets hitherto. He might have spared himself the expense, he
says, and Oldenburg the trouble. Oldenburg, as we know (Vol. IV. pp.
626-627), had never been very enthusiastic over Milton's onslaughts
on Morus, The distribution of the Anti-Morus publications, therefore,
may not have been to his taste. Milton seems to hint as much.
[Footnote 1: Bayle, Art. Morus; Brace's Life of Morus, 204 et
seq.--It was deemed of great importance by the English Royalists
that they should be able to report of Charles II., when Paris was
his residence, that he attended the church at Charenton. There is a
letter to him of April 17, 1653, saying his non-attendance there was
"much to his prejudice." (Macray's Cal. of Clarendon Papers, II.
193).]
In August 1657 Milton, after three months of total rest, so far as
the records show, from the business of writing foreign Letters for
the Protector, resumed that business. We have attributed his release
from it for so long to the fact that his old assistant MEADOWS was
again in town, and available in the Whitehall office, in the interval
between his return from Portugal and his departure on his new mission
to Denmark; and the coincidence of Milton's resumption of this kind
of duty with the precise time of Meadows's preparations for his new
absence is at least curious. Though it had been intended that he
should set out for Denmark immediately after his appointment to the
mission in February, he had been detained for various reasons; and
now in August, the great war between Denmark and Sweden having just
begun, he was to set out in company with another envoy: viz.
MAJOR-GENERAL WILLIAM JEPHSON, whom Cromwell had selected as a
suitable person for a contemporary mission, to the King of Sweden
(ante p. 312). It will be observed that eight of the following ten
Letters of Milton, all written in August or September 1657, and
forming his first contribution of letters for the Second
Protectorate, relate to the missions of Jephson and Meadows:--
(CI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _August_ 1657:--His
Highness has heard with no ordinary concern that war has broken out
between Sweden and Denmark. [He had received the news August 13:
see ante p. 313.] He anticipates great evils to the Protestant
cause in consequence. He sends, therefore, the most Honourable
WILLIAM JEPHSON, General, and member of his Parliament, as
Envoy-extraordinary to his Majesty for negotiation in this and in
other matters. He begs a favourable reception for Jephson.
(CII.) TO THE COUNT OF OLDENBURG, _August_ 1657:--On his way
to the King of Sweden, then in camp near Lubeck, JEPHSON would
have to pass through several of the German states, and first of all
through the territories of this old and assured friend of the
English Commonwealth and of the Protector (see Vol. IV. pp. 424,
480-1, 527, 635-6). Cromwell, therefore, introduces JEPHSON, and
requests all furtherance for him.
(CIII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF BREMEN, _August_
1657:--Also to introduce and recommend JEPHSON; who, on his route
from Oldenburg eastwards, would pass through Bremen.
(CIV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, _August_
1657:--Still requesting attention to JEPHSON on his transit.
(CV.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF LUBECK, _August_
1657:--Still recommending JEPHSON; who, at Lubeck, would be near
his destination, the camp of Charles Gustavus.
(CVI.) TO FREDERICK-WILLIAM, MARQUIS OF BRANDENBURG, _August_
1657:--At first this Prince, better known now as "The Great
Elector, Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia," had been on the side of
Sweden against Poland; and, in conjunction with Charles Gustavus,
he had fought that great Battle of Warsaw (July 1656) which had
nearly ruined the Polish King, John Casimir. Having been detached
from his alliance with Sweden, however, in a manner already
explained (ante p. 313), he had now a very difficult part to play
in the Swedish-Polish-German-Danish entanglement.--As Jephson had
instructions to treat with this important German Prince, as well as
with the King of Sweden, Cromwell begs leave to introduce him
formally. "The singular worth of your Highness both in peace and in
war, and the greatness and constancy of your spirit, being already
so famed over the whole world that almost all neighbouring Princes
are eager for your friendship, and no one could desire for himself
a more faithful and constant friend and ally, in order that you may
understand that we also are in the number of those that have the
highest and strongest opinion of your remarkable services to the
Christian Commonweal, we have sent to you the most Honourable
WILLIAM Jephson," &c.: so the note opens; and the rest is a mere
request that the Elector will hear what Jephson has to say.--The
relations between the Elector and the Protector had hitherto been
rather indefinite, if not cool; and hence perhaps the highly
complimentary strain of this letter.
(CVII.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF HAMBURG, _August_
1657:--All the foregoing, for Jephson, must have been written
between August 13, when the news of the proclamation of war between
Sweden and Denmark reached London, and August 29, when Jephson set
out on his mission. MEADOWS left London, on his distinct mission,
two days afterwards.[1] His route was not to be quite the same as
Jephson's; but he also was to pass through Hamburg. He is therefore
recommended separately, by this note, to the authorities of that
city. His letters of credence to the King of Denmark had,
doubtless, already been made out,--possibly by himself. They are
not among Milton's State-letters.
[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, under Aug. 1657.]
(CVIII.) To M. DE BORDEAUX, AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY FOR THE
FRENCH KING, _August_ 1657:--There has been presented to the
Lord Protector a petition from Samuel Dawson, John Campsie, and
John Niven, merchants of Londonderry, stating that, shortly after
the Treaty with France in 1655, a ship of theirs called _The
Speedwell_ ("name of better omen than the event proved"), the
master of which was John Ker, had been seized, on her return voyage
from Bordeaux to Derry, by two armed vessels of Brest, taken into
Brest harbour, and sold there with her cargo. The damages
altogether are valued at £2,500. The petitioners have not been able
to obtain redress in France. The matter has been referred by the
Protector to his Council. They find that the petitioners have a
just right either to the restitution of their ship and cargo or to
compensation in money. "I therefore request of your Excellency, and
even request it in the name of the most Serene Lord Protector, that
you will endeavour your utmost, and join also the authority of your
office to your endeavours, that as soon as possible one or other be
done." The wording shows that the letter was not signed by the
Protector himself, but only by Lawrence as President of the
Council. It was probably not in rule for the Protector personally
to write to an Ambassador in such a case.
(CIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, _Sept._ 1657:--A letter
of rather peculiar tenor. A William Ellis, master of a ship called
_The Little Lewis_, had been hired at Alexandria by the Pasha
of Memphis, to carry rice, sugar, and coffee, either to
Constantinople or Smyrna, for the use of the Sultan himself;
instead of which the rascal, giving the Turkish fleet the slip, had
gone into Leghorn, where he was living on his booty. "The act is
one of very dangerous example, inasmuch as it throws discredit on
the Christian name and exposes to the risk of robbery the fortunes
of merchants living under the Turk." The Grand-Duke is therefore
requested to be so good as to arrest Ellis, keep him in custody,
and see to the safety of the ship and cargo till they are restored
to the Sultan.
(CX.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY (undated)[1]:--This letter to the prince
on whom the Piedmontese massacre has conferred such dark celebrity
is on very innocent and ordinary business. The owners of a London
ship, called The Welcome, Henry Martin master, have Informed his
Highness that, on her way to Genoa and Leghorn, she was seized by a
French vessel of forty-six guns having letters of marque from the
Duke, and carried into his port of Villafranca. The cargo is
estimated at £25,000. Will the Duke see that ship and cargo are
restored to the owners, with damages? He may expect like justice in
any similar case in which he may have to apply to his Highness.