Lord Viscount Howard (Colonel).
Lord Richard Ingoldsby (Colonel).
Lord Whitlocke (still a much respected Cromwellian, and conjoined
with Fiennes and Lisle in the Commission of the Great Seal,
Jan. 22, 1658-9).
Lord Commissioner John Lisle.
Lord Chief Justice Glynne.
Lord Chief Justice St. John.
William Pierrepoint.
Sir Edmund Prideaux (_Attorney General_).
Sir William Bills (_Solicitor General_).
Sir Oliver Fleming (_Master of the Ceremonies_).
Sir Richard Chiverton (_Lord Mayor of London_).
Dr. John Wilkins (his Highness's uncle-in-law).
Dr. John Owen.
Dr. Thomas Goodwin.
III. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ARMY IN OR NEAR LONDON:--Fleetwood
and Desborough, besides being Councillors, were the real heads of the
Army; and Skippon, Sydenham, and Montague, though of the Council too,
with Viscount Howard and Ingoldsby, among the near advisers out of
the Council, might also rank as Army-chiefs. But, in addition to
these, there were many distinguished officers, tied to the
Cromwellian dynasty, as it might seem, by their antecedents. Among
these were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, Robert Lilburne, Sir John
Barkstead, James Berry, Thomas Kelsay, William Butler, Tobias
Bridges, Sir Thomas Pride, Sir John Hewson, Thomas Cooper, John
Jones, and John Clerk. These were now usually designated, in their
military capacity, as merely _Colonels;_ but the first eight had
been among Cromwell's "Major-Generals," three of the thirteen had
their knighthoods from him, and nine of the thirteen (Whalley, Goffe,
Barkstead. Berry, Pride, Hewson, Cooper, Jones, and Clerk) had been
among his Parliamentary "Lords."--We have mentioned but the chiefs of
the Army, called "the Army Grandees;" but, since Richard's accession,
and by his consent or summons, Army-officers of all grades had
flocked to London to form a kind of military Parliament round
Fleetwood and Desborough, and to assist in launching the new
Protectorate. They held weekly meetings, sometimes to the number of
200 or more, in Fleetwood's residence of WALLINGFORD HOUSE, close to
Whitehall Palace; and, as at these meetings, as well as at the
smaller meetings of "the Army Grandees" in the same place, all
matters were discussed, WALLINGFORD HOUSE was, for the time, a more
important seat of deliberation than the Council-Room itself. There
were also more secret meetings in Desborongh's house.
IV. WEIGHTY CROMWELLIANS AWAY FROM LONDON. (1) GENERAL GEORGE MONK,
_Commander-in-Chief in Scotland;_ with whom may be associated
such members of the Scottish Council as Samuel Desborough, Colonel
Adrian Scroope, Colonel Nathaniel Whetham, and Swinton of Swinton.
(2) LORD HENRY CROMWELL, _Lord Deputy of Ireland_ hitherto, but
now, by his brother's commission, _Lord Lieutenant of Ireland_
(Sept. 1658); with whom may be associated such of the Irish Council
or military staff as Chancellor Steele, Chief Justice Pepys, Colonel
Sir Hardress Waller, Colonel Sir Matthew Tomlinson, Colonel William
Purefoy, Colonel Jerome Zanchy, and Sir Francis Russell. Also in
Ireland at this time, and nominally in retirement, but a Cromwellian
of the highest magnitude, was LORD BROGHILL. (3) Abroad the most
important Cromwellian by far was SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART, _Lord
Ambassador to France, General, and Governor of Dunkirk;_ with whom
may be remembered George Downing, Resident in the United Provinces,
and Meadows and Jephson, Envoys to the Scandinavian powers. Lockhart
managed to be in England on a brief visit in December 1658.
These fifty or sixty persons, one may say, were the men on whom it
mainly depended, in the first months of Richard's Protectorate,
whether that Protectorate should succeed or should founder. It has
been customary, in general retrospects of the time, to represent some
of them as already tired of the Commonwealth in any possible form,
and scheming afar off for the restoration of the Stuarts. This,
however, is quite a misconstruction.--Monk, who is chiefly suspected,
and who did now, from his separate station in the north, watch events
in an independent manner, had certainly as yet no thought of the kind
imagined. He had sent Richard a paper of advices showing a real
desire to assist him at the outset. He advised him, substantially, to
persevere in the later or very conservative policy of his father, but
with certain differences or additions, which would be now easy. He
ought, said Monk, at once to secure the affections of the great
Presbyterian body, by attaching to himself privately some of the most
eminent Presbyterian divines, and by publicly calling an Assembly of
Divines, in which Moderate Presbyterians and Moderate Independents
together might agree on a standard of orthodoxy, and so stop the
blasphemy and profaneness "too frequent in many places by the great
extent of Toleration." Then, when a Parliament should meet, he ought
to bring a number of the most prudent and trustworthy of the old
nobility and the wealthy country gentry into the House of Lords. For
retrenchment of expense the chief means would be a reduction of the
Armies in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by throwing two regiments
everywhere into one, and so getting rid of unnecessary officers; nor
let his Highness think this advice too bold, for Monk could assure
him "There is not an officer in the Army, upon any discontent, that
has interest enough to draw two men after him, if he be out of
place." On the other hand, the Navy ought to be strengthened, and
many of the ships re-officered[1]--Such were Monk's advices; and,
whatever may be thought of their value, they were certainly given in
good faith. And so with those others to whom, from their subsequent
conduct, similar suspicions have been attached. At our present date
there was no ground for these suspicions. To some in the list, either
ranking among the actual Regicides or otherwise deeply involved in
the transactions of the late reign and their immediate consequences,
the idea of a Restoration of the Stuarts may have been more horrible,
on personal grounds, than it need have been to others, conscious only
of later participation and lighter responsibility; but not a man in
the list yet dreamt of going over to the Royalist cause. The
dissensions were as to the manner and extent of their adhesion to
Richard, and the policy to be recommended to him or forced upon him.
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 387-388.]
Cromwell's death having removed the one vast personal ascendency that
had so long kept all in obedience, jealousies and selfish interests
had sprung up, and were wrangling round his successor. From certain
mysterious letters in cipher from Falconbridge to Henry Cromwell it
appears that the wrangle had begun even round Cromwell's death-bed,
"Z. [Cromwell] is now beyond all possibility of recovery"
Falconbridge had written on Tuesday, Aug. 31: "I long to hear from A.
[Henry Cromwell] what his intentions are. If I may know, I'll make
the game here as fair as may be; and, if I may have commission from
A., I can make sure of Lord Lockhart and those with him." One might
imagine from this that Falconbridge would have liked to secure the
succession for Henry; but it rather appears that what he wanted was
to counteract a cabal against the interests of the family generally,
which he had reported as then going on among the officers. Certain
it is that, after Richard had been proclaimed and Henry had most
loyally and affectionately put all his services at the disposal of
his elder brother, Falconbridge continued in cipher letters to inform
Henry of the proceedings of the same cabal. Gradually, in these
letters and in other documents, we come to a clear view of the main
fact. It was that the wrangle of jealousies and personal interests
round the new Protector had taken shape in a distinct division of his
adherents and supporters into two parties. First there was what may
be called the _Court Party_ or _Dynastic Party,_
represented by Falconbridge himself, and by Admiral Montague,
Fiennes, Philip Jones, Thurloe, and others in the Council, with
Howard, Whitlocke, and Ingoldsby, out of the Council, and with the
assured backing of Henry Cromwell, Broghill, and Lockhart, if not
also of Monk. What they desired was to make Richard's Protectorate an
avowed continuation of his father's, with the same forms, the same
powers, and the permanence of the _Petition and Advice_ as the
instrument of the Protectoral Constitution in every particular. In
opposition to this party was the _Army Party,_ or
_Wallingford-House Party,_ led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with
a following of others in the Council and of the Army-officers almost
in mass. While maintaining the Protectorate in name, they were for
such modifications of the Protectoral Constitution as might consist
with the fact that the chief magistrate was now no longer Oliver, but
the feeble and unmilitary Richard. In especial, they were for
limiting the Protectorship by taking from Richard the control of the
Army, and re-assuming it for the Army itself in the name of the
Commonwealth. It was their proposal, more precisely, that Fleetwood
should be Commander-in-chief independently, and so a kind of military
co-ordinate with the Protector.[1]
[Footnote 1: Falconbridge's Letters (deciphered) in Thurloe, VII.
365-366 et seq., with other Letters in Thurloe and Letters of the
French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, chiefly to Mazarin, appended to
Guizot's _Richard Cromwell and the Restoration,_ I. 231 _et
seq._]
For nearly five months there had been this tug of parties at
Whitehall round poor Richard. Naturally, all his own sympathies were
with the Dynastic Party; and he had made this apparent. He had
proposed to bring Falconbridge and Broghill, perhaps also Whitlocke,
into the Council; and, when he found that the Army party would not
consent, he had declined to bring in Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and
Cooper, proposed by that party in preference. In the matter of the
limitation of his Protectorship by the surrender of his headship of
the Army he had been even more firm. The matter having come before
him formally by petition from the Council of Officers, after having
been pressed upon him again and again by Fleetwood and Desborough in
private, he had, in a conference with all the officers then in town
(Oct, 14). Fleetwood at their head, explained his sentiments fully.
The speech was written for him by Thurloe. After some gentle
preliminaries, with dutiful references to his father, it came to the
main subject. "I am sure it may be said of me," said Richard, "that
not for my wisdom, my parts, my experience, my holiness, hath God
chosen me before others: there are many here amongst you who excel me
in all these things: but God hath done herein as it pleased Him, and
the nation, by His providence, hath put things this way. Being then
thus trusted, I shall make a conscience, I hope, in the execution of
this trust; which I see not how I should do if I should part with any
part of the trust which is committed to me unto any others, though
they may be better men than myself." He then instanced the two
things which he understood to be demanded of him by the Army. "For
instance," he said, "if I should trust it to any one person or more
to fill up the vacancies of the Army otherwise than it is in the
_Petition and Advice_--which directs that the
commanders-in-chief of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the other
field-officers, should be from time to time supplied by me, with the
consent of the Council, leaving all other commissioned officers only
to my disposal--I should therein break my trust and do otherwise than
the Parliament intended. It may as well be asked of me that I would
commit it to some other persons to supply the vacancies in the
Council, in the Lords' House, and all other magistracies. I leave it
to any reasonable man to imagine whether this be a thing in my power
to do.... There hath also been some discourse about a
Commander-in-chief. You know how that stands in the _Petition_
and _Advice_, which I must make my rule in my government, and
shall through the blessing of God stick close to that. I am not
obliged to make _any_ Commander-in-chief: that is left to my own
liberty, as it was in my father's; only, if I will make any, it must
be done by the consent of the Council. And by the Commander-in-chief
can be meant no other than the person who _under me_ commands
the whole Army, call him what you will--'Field-Marshal,'
'Commander-in-chief,' 'Major-General,' or 'Lieutenant-General.' ...
Commander-in-chief is the genus; the others are the species. And,
though I am not obliged to have any such person besides myself to
command all the forces, yet I _have_ made one: that is, I have
made my brother Fleetwood Lieutenant-General of all the Army, and so
by consequence commander-in-chief [_under me_]; and I am sure I
can do nothing that will give him more influence in the Army than
that title will give him, unless I should make him General
[_instead of me_]; and I have told you the reasons why I cannot
do that." Altogether, the speech, and the modesty with which it was
delivered, produced very considerable effect for the moment upon the
officers. Whalley, Goffe, Berry, and others are understood to have
shown more sympathy with Richard in consequence; there was respect
for his firmness among people generally when it came to be known;
and, though the meetings at Wallingford House and Desborough's house
were continued, action was deferred. One effect, however, had been to
rouse the dormant Anti-Cromwellianism of the Army-men, and to bring
out, more than Fleetwood and Desborough intended, that leaven of pure
Republicanism, or affection for the "good old cause" of 1648-1653,
which had not ceased, through all the submission to the Protectorate,
to lurk in the regiments in combination with Anabaptistry,
Fifth-Monarchism, and other extreme forms of religious Independency.
In the meetings round Fleetwood and Desborough there had been
reflections on the late Protector's memory far from respectful. Henry
Cromwell in Ireland had heard of this; and among many interesting
letters of his to various correspondents on the difficulties of his
brother's opening Protectorate, all showing a proud and fine
sensitiveness, with some flash of his father's intellect, there is
one (Oct. 20) of rebuke to his brother-in-law Fleetwood on account of
_his_ conjunction with the malcontents, "Pray give me leave to
expostulate with you. How came those 200 or 300 officers together?
... If they were called, was it with his Highness's privity? If they
met without leave in so great a number, were they told their error? I
shall not meddle with the matter of their petition, though some
things in it do unhandsomely reflect not only on this present, but
his late, Highness, I wish with all my heart you were
Commander-in-chief of all the forces in the three nations; but I had
rather have it done by his Highness's especial grace and mere motion
than put upon you in a tumultuary soldierly way. But, dear brother, I
must tell you (and I cannot do it without tears) I hear that dirt was
thrown upon his late Highness at that great meeting. They were
exhorted to stand up for that 'good old cause which had long lain
asleep,' &c. I thought my dear father had pursued it to the last. He
died like a servant of God, and prayed for those that desired to
trample upon his dust, for _they_ also were God's people. O dear
brother! ... whither do these things tend? Surely God hath a
controversy with us. What a hurly-burly is there made! A hundred
Independent ministers called together" [the Savoy Synod of the
Congregationalists, with Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Nye, Caryl, and
others, at their head, convoked Sept. 29, 1658, for framing a
Confession of Faith, by permission from the late Protector: see ante
p. 844]. "a Council, as you call it, of 200 or 300 officers of a
judgment! Remember what has always befallen imposing spirits. Will
not the loins of an imposing Independent or Anabaptist be as heavy as
the loins of an imposing Prelate or Presbyter? And is it a dangerous
error that dominion is founded on grace when it is held by the Church
of Rome, and a sound principle when it is held by the Fifth Monarchy?
... O dear brother, my spirit is sorely oppressed with the
consideration of the miserable estate of the innocent people of
these three poor nations. What have these sheep done that
_their_ blood should be the price of _our_ lust and
ambition? Let me beg of you to remember how his late Highness loved
you, how he honoured you with the highest trust in the world by
leaving the sword in your hand which must defend or destroy us; and
his declaring his Highness his successor shows that he left it there
to preserve _him_ and _his_ reputation. O brother, use it
to curb extravagant spirits and busybodies; but let not the nations
be governed by it. Let us take heed of arbitrary power. Let us be
governed by the known laws of the land, and let all things be kept in
their proper channels; and let the Army be so governed that the world
may never hear of them unless there be occasion to fight. And truly,
brother, you must pardon me if I say God and man may require this
duty at your hand, and lay all miscarriages in the Army, in point of
discipline, at _your_ door." Fleetwood could answer this (Nov.
9) but very lamely: "I do wonder what I have done to deserve such a
severe letter from you," &c. Fleetwood was really a good-hearted
gentleman, meaning no desperate harm to Richard or his Protectorate,
though desiring the Commandership-in-chief for himself, and perhaps
(who knows domestic secrets?) a co-equality of public status for his
wife, Lady Bridget, with the Lady-Protectress Dorothy. In fact,
however, Lieutenant-General Fleetwood and Major-General Desborough
between them had let loose forces that were to defy their own
management. Meanwhile, the phenomenon observable in the weeks
preceding the meeting of the Parliament which Richard had called was
that of a violent division already among the councillors and
assessors of the Protectorate. There was the _Court Party_ or
_Dynastic Party,_ taking their stand on the _Petition and
Advice,_ and advocating a strictly conservative and constitutional
procedure, in the terms of that document, on the lines laid down by
Oliver. There was also the _Army Party_ or _Wallingford-House
Party,_ led by Fleetwood and Desborough, with an immediate retinue
of Cromwellian ex-Major-Generals and Colonels purposely in London,
and a more shadowy tail of majors, captains, and inferior officers,
coiled away among the regiments.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 447-449, 454-455, and 498; Phillips, 639;
Guizot, I. 13-19, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux appended to the
volume.]
More than questions of home-administration was involved in this
division of parties. It involved also the future foreign policy of
the Protectorate. The desire of Richard himself and of the Court
Party was to prosecute the foreign policy which Oliver had so
strenuously begun. Now, the great bequests from the late Protectorate
in the matter of foreign policy had been two: (1)_The War with
Spain, in alliance with France._ The Treaty Offensive and
Defensive with France against Spain, originally formed by Cromwell
March 23, 1656-7, and renewed March 28, 1658, was to expire on March
28, 1659. Was it to be then again renewed? If not, how was the war
with Spain to be farther conducted, and what was to become of
Dunkirk, Mardike, and other English conquests and interests in
Flanders? Mazarin was really anxious on this topic. The alliance
with England had been immensely advantageous for France; and could it
not be continued? In frequent letters, since Cromwell's death, to M.
de Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London, Mazarin had pressed for
information on this point. The substance of the Ambassador's replies
had been that the new Protector and his Council, especially Mr.
Secretary Thurloe, were too much engrossed with home-difficulties to
be very explicit with him, but that he had reason to believe a loan
from France of £50,000 would aid the natural inclinations of the
Court-party to continue the alliance. This was more than Mazarin
would risk on the chance, though he was willing to act on the
suggestion of the ambassador that a present of Barbary horses should
be sent to Lord Falconbridge, or a jewel to Lady Falconbridge, to
keep _them_ in good-humour. There can be no doubt that
Falconbridge, Thurloe, Lockhart, and the Court Party generally, did
hope to preserve the close friendship with France and the hold
acquired by England on Flanders. Lockhart particularly had at heart
the hard, half-starved condition of his poor Dunkirk garrison and
the other forces in Flanders. On the other hand, there were signs
that public feeling might desert the Court Party in their desire to
carry on Oliver's joint-enterprise with France against the Spaniards.
Dunkirk and Mardike were precious possessions; but might it not be
better for trade to make peace with Spain, even if Jamaica should
have to be given back and there should have to be other sacrifices?
This idea had diffused itself, it appears, pretty widely among the
pure Commonwealth's men, and was in favour with some of the
Wallingford-House party. Why be always at war with Spain? True, she
was Roman Catholic, and the more the pity; but what did that concern
England? Was there not enough to do at home?[1] (2) _Assistance to
the King of Sweden_. A great surprise to all Europe just before
Cromwell's death had been, as we know, the sudden rupture of the
Peace of Roeskilde between Sweden and Denmark, with the reinvasion of
Zealand by Charles Gustavus, and his march on Copenhagen (ante p.
396). Had Cromwell lived, there is no doubt that, with whatever
regret at the new rupture, he would have stood by his heroic brother
of Sweden. For was not the Swedish King still, as before, the one
real man of mark in the whole world of the Baltic, the hope of that
league of Protestant championship on the Continent which Cromwell had
laboured for; and was he not now standing at bay against a most ugly
and unnatural combination of enemies? Not only were John Casimir and
his Roman Catholic Poles, and the Emperor Leopold and his Roman
Catholic Austrians, and Protestant Brandenburg and some other German
States, all in eager alliance with the Danes for the opportunity of
another rush against _him_; the Dutch too were abetting the
Danes for their own commercial interests? Actually this was the state
of things which Richard's Government had to consider. Charles
Gustavus was still besieging Copenhagen; a Dutch fleet, under Admiral
Opdam, had gone to the Baltic to relieve the Danes (Oct. 1658): was
Cromwell's grand alliance with the Swede, were the prospects of the
Protestant League, were English interests in the Baltic, to be of no
account? Applications for help had been made by the Swedish King;
Mazarin, through the French ambassador, had been urging assistance to
Sweden; the inclinations of Richard, Thurloe, and the rest, were all
that way. Here again, however, the perplexity of home-affairs, the
want of money, the refusal of Mazarin himself to lend even £50,000,
were pleaded in excuse. All that could be done at first was to
further the despatch to the Baltic of Sir George Ayscough, an able
English Admiral who had for some years been too much in the
background, but of whom the Swedish Count Bundt had conceived a high
opinion during his embassy to England in 1655-6, and who had
consequently been invited by the Swedish King to enter his service,
bringing with him as many English officers and seamen as he could.
This volunteer expedition of Ayscough Richard and his Council did at
once countenance. Nay, when news came (Nov. 8) of a great defeat of
Opdam's Dutch fleet by the Swedish Admiral Wrangel, the disposition
to help the Swede became stronger. On the 13th of that month a
special envoy from the Swedish King, who had been in London for some
weeks, took his departure with some satisfaction; and within a few
days Vice-Admiral Lawson and his fleet of some twenty or twenty-one
ships in the Downs had orders to sail for the Sound, for mediation at
least, but for the support of Charles Gustavus if necessary. The
fleet did put to sea, but with hesitations to the last and the report
that it was "wind-bound."[2]
[Footnote 1: Letters between Mazarin and M. de Bordeaux in Guizot, I.
231-286, and II. 441-450; Thurloe, VII. 466-467.]
[Footnote 2: Letters between Mazarin and M. de Bordeaux last cited,
with. Guizot, I. 23-26; Thurloe, VII. 412, 509, 529; Whitlocke for
Sept., Oct., Nov., and Dec. 1658, also for Aug. 1656; Phillips,
638.]
"Wind-bound" was the exact description of the state of Richard's
Government itself. All depended on what should blow from the
Parliament that had been called. In the writs for the elections to
the Commons there had been a very remarkable retrogression from the
practice of Oliver for his two Parliaments. For those two Parliaments
there had been adopted the reformed electoral system agreed upon by
the Long Parliament, reducing the total number of members for England
and Wales to about 400, instead of the 500 or more of the ancient
system, and allocating the 400 among constituencies rearranged so as
to give a vast proportion of the representation to the counties,
while reducing that of the burghs generally and disfranchising many
small old burghs altogether. The _Petition and Advice_ having
left this matter of the number of seats and their distribution open
for farther consideration, Richard and his Council had been advised
by the lawyers that it would be more "according to law" and therefore
more safe and more agreeable to the spirit and letter of the
_Petition and Advice_, to abandon the late temporary method,
though sanctioned by the Long Parliament, and revert to the ancient
use and wont. Writs had been issued, therefore, for the return of
over 500 members from England and Wales by the old time-honoured
constituencies, besides additions from Scotland and Ireland. Thus,
whereas, for the last two Protectoral Parliaments, some of the larger
English counties had returned as many as six, eight, nine, or twelve
members each, all were now reduced alike to two, the large number of
seats so set free, together with the extra hundred, going back among
the burghs, and reincluding those that had been disfranchised. London
also was reduced from six seats to four. It seems amazing now that
this vast retrogression should have been so quietly accepted. It
seems even to have been popular; and, at all events, it roused no
commotion. It had been recommended by the lawyers, and it was
expected to turn out favourable to the Government.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 615-619; and compare the List of Members of this
Parliament of Richard (_Part. Hist._ III. 1530-1537) with the
lists of Oliver's two Parliaments _(Part. Hist._ 1428-1433, and
1479-1484).]
On Thursday, Jan. 27, 1658-9, the two Houses assembled in
Westminster. In the Upper House, where Lord Commissioner Fiennes
occupied the woolsack, were as many of Cromwell's sixty-three "Lords"
(ante pp. 323-324) as had chosen to come. All the Council, except
Thurloe, being in this House, and the others having been, for the
most part, carefully selected Cromwellians, it might have been
expected that Government would be strong in the House. As it
included, however, Fleetwood, Desborough, and all the chief Colonels
of the Wallingford-House party, it is believed that in such
attendances as there were (never more than forty perhaps) that party
may have been stronger than the Court party. But it was the
composition of the Commons House that was really of consequence, and
here appearances promised well for Richard. The total number of the
members, by the returns, was 558, of whom 482 were from English
counties and burghs, 25 from Wales, 30 from Ireland, and only 21 from
Scotland. Some fifty of the total number were resolute pure
Republicans, among whom may be noted Bradshaw (Cheshire), Vane
(Whitchurch in Hants), Scott (Wycombe), Hasilrig (Leicester), Ludlow
(Hindon), Henry Neville (Reading), Okey (Bedfordshire), and Weaver
(Stamford); and there was a considerable sprinkling of
Anti-Cromwellians of other colours besides, including Lord Fairfax
(Yorkshire), Lambert (Pontefract), Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (Wilts),
and Major-General Browne (London). But Thurloe was there to represent
the Government in chief (returned by Cambridge University, but by
several other places also); and he could count about a hundred sure
English adherents on the benches; among whom were Sir Edmund
Prideaux (Saltash), Sir William Ellis (Grantham), together with his
own subordinate in the Council-office, William Jessop (Stafford), and
Milton's assistant in the Foreign Secretaryship, Andrew Marvell
(Hull). There were not a few Army-officers of the Wallingford-House
party; but, on the whole, this element did not seem to be
particularly strong in the House. Among the members for Scottish
constituencies were the Marquis of Argyle (Aberdeenshire), Samuel
Desborough (Midlothian), the Earl of Tweeddale (East Lothian),
Colonel Adrian Scroope (Linlithgow group of Burghs), Swinton of
Swinton (Haddingtonshire), Colonel Whetham (St. Andrews, &c.), and
Monk's brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas Clarges (Aberdeen, Banff, and
Cullen). Ireland had returned, among her thirty, Sir Hardress Waller
(Kerry, &c.), Sir Jerome Zanchy (Tipperary and Waterford), Sir
Charles Coote (Galway and Mayo), and two Ingoldsbys. The Scottish and
Irish representatives were, almost to a man, Government nominees.
Altogether, Thurloe's anxiety must have been about the yet unknown
mass of 300 or so, some scores of them lawyers, others
country-gentlemen, and many of them young, that formed the neutral
stuff to be yet operated upon. Among these, in spite of the oath of
fidelity to the Lord Protector, there were indubitably not a few who
were Stuartists at heart; but most wavered between Republicanism and
the Protectorate, and it was hopeful for Thurloe in this respect that
so much of the mass was Presbyterian. Ludlow, who did not at first
take his seat, tells us that he at last contrived to do so furtively
without being sworn, and seems to hint that Vane did the same. There
was negligence on the part of the doorkeepers, or they were confused
by the multitude of strange faces; for a stray London madman, named
King, sat in the House for some time, in the belief that, as one of
that name had been elected for some place, he might possibly be the
person.[1]
[Footnote 1: List in _Parl. Hist._ III. 1530-1537; Ludlow, 619
et seq.]
Richard's opening speech was in a good strain. It assumed loyalty to
the memory of his father and to the _Petition and Advice_, and
recommended immediate attention to the arrears of the Army and to
other money-exigencies, with zealous prosecution of the war with
Spain, and consideration of what might be done for the King of
Sweden, the cause of European Protestantism, and English interests in
the Baltic. The speech was delivered in the Lords, only a few of the
Commons attending. They were busy with swearing in their members, and
with the election of a Speaker. Mr. Chaloner Chute, a lawyer, one of
the members for Middlesex, was unanimously chosen; but, short as the
session was to be, the House was to have three Speakers in
succession. Mr. Chute acted till March 9, when his health broke down,
and Sir Lislebone Long, one of the members for Wells, was appointed
his substitute. Sir Lislebone died only seven days afterwards (March
16), and Mr. Thomas Bampfield, one, of the members for Exeter,
succeeded him. Chute having died also, Bampfield became full Speaker.
April 15, 1659.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Parl. Hist._ III. 1537-1540, and Commons Journals
of dates.]
A day or two having been spent in preliminary business, and the House
presenting the spectacle, long unknown in Westminster, of no fewer
than between 300 and 400 members in daily attendance, Thurloe, on the
1st of February, boldly threw down the gage by bringing in a bill for
recognising Richard's right and title to be Lord Protector. Hasilrig
and the Republicans were taken by surprise, and could only protest
that the motion was unseasonable and that other matters ought to have
precedence. The bill having been read the first time that day,
Thurloe consented that the second reading should be deferred to the
7th. On that day, accordingly, there began a debate which lasted for
seven successive days, and was a full trial of strength between the
Government and the Republicans. Hasilrig, Neville, Scott, Vane,
Ludlow, and others, exerted themselves to the utmost, Hasilrig
leading, and making one speech three hours long. It was evident,
however, that the Republicans knew themselves to be but a minority,
and used the debate only for re-opening the question of a Republic.
They did not attack the direct proposal of the Bill; on the contrary
they vied with the Cromwellians in language of respect for Richard.
"I confess I do love the person of the Lord Protector; I never saw
nor heard either fraud or guile in him." said Hasilrig. "I would not
hazard a hair of his present Highness's head," said Scott; "if you
think of a Single Person, I would have him sooner than any man
alive." They did not want, they said, to pull down the Protectorate;
they only objected to Thurloe's high-handed method for committing the
House to a foregone conclusion. But Thurloe beat. On Monday the 14th,
the question having been finally put "that it be part of this Bill to
recognise and declare his Highness Richard, Lord Protector, to be the
undoubted Lord Protector and Chief Magistrate," it was carried by 191
votes to 168 to retain the words "recognise and," and so to accept
Richard's accession as valid already. On a proposal to leave out the
word "undoubted" Thurloe did not think a division worth while, but
made the concession. He did oppose a resolution, suddenly brought
forward, to the effect that the vote just passed should not be
binding until the House should have settled the clauses farther
defining the powers of the Lord Protector; but that resolution,
having caught the fancy of the House, passed with his single dissent.
On the whole, he had succeeded in his first great battle with the
Republicans.--Nor was he less successful in the second. The
Protectorship having been voted, it was Thurloe's policy to push next
the question of the recognition of the Other House, whereas the
Republicans desired to avoid that question as long as possible, so as
to keep the Other House a mere nonentity, while the Commons
proceeded, as the substantial and sovereign House, to define the
powers of the Protector. On the 18th of February, the Republicans,
having challenged a settlement of this difference by moving that the
question of the negative voice of the Protector in passing laws
should have precedence of the question of the Other House, were
beaten overwhelmingly by 217 votes to 86; and then for more than a
month the question of the Other House was the all-engrossing one. It
involved other questions, some of them apparently independent. Thus,
on the 8th of March, the debate took a curiously significant turn.
Indignant at the very notion that there should be anything in England
calling itself "The House of Lords," the Republican speakers had
played on this supposed horror with every variety of sarcasm,
sneering at the existing "Other House," with its shabby equipment of
old colonels and other originally mean persons. If there was to be a
House of Lords, Hasilrig and others now said imprudently, why should
it not be a real one, why should not the old nobility, so many of
them honourable men, resume their places? "Why not?" was the instant
retort from some independent members, with the instant applause of
many in the House. Hasilrig saw his mistake, of which Thurloe did not
fail to take advantage. "The old Peers," said Thurloe, "are not
excluded by the _Petition and Advice_: divers are
called,--others may be"; and the occasion was taken to pass a
resolution expressly reserving for such of the old peers as had been
faithful the privilege of being summoned to the Other House, should
the issue of the debate be in favour of the existence of that
institution. The divisions on this incidental resolution were the
largest recorded in the Journals of the House--the previous question
for putting the resolution being carried by 203 to 184, and the
resolution itself by 195 to 188. Though the majority was but small,
the gain to the Court Party was precious, because on an unexpected
point. But the Republicans had done themselves no good by their style
in the main discussion, A miscellaneous assembly always resents the
ungenerous, and the sneers at the existing composition of the Other
House had seemed ungenerous. "They have gone through wet and dry, hot
and cold, fire and water; they are the best officers of the best army
in the world; their swords are made of what Hercules's club was made
of": such were the terms in which one speaker defended the military
veterans of the Other House; and they were received with cheers. Nor
did the next step of the Republicans improve their position. Having
observed what a considerable proportion of Thurloe's majorities
consisted of the members from Scotland and Ireland, Cromwellians
nearly to a man, they tried to sweep these from the House in
anticipation of future votes. First, they raised the question about
the Scottish members, contending that their presence in an English
Parliament was unconstitutional, that the _de facto_
incorporation of Scotland with the Commonwealth had never been
legally consummated, &c. On this subject, the House having first
negatived the proposal that the Scottish members should withdraw
during the debate, it was decided, March 21, by a majority of 211
(Thurloe one of the tellers) to 120 (Vane one of the tellers), "That
the members returned for Scotland shall continue to sit as members
during this present Parliament," A like vote, March 23, retained the
Irish members. The Republicans had again lost character by this piece
of tactics. Not only was it offensive to Scotland and Ireland; but to
many disinterested English members it seemed a mean attempt to
depreciate, for a mere party purpose, those great achievements of
recent years which had made the British Islands, as if by miracle,
one body-politic at last. On the 28th of March the principal debate
came to an end in this two-claused Resolution: "That this House will
transact with the persons now sitting in the Other House, as an House
of Parliament, during the present Parliament; and that it is not
hereby intended to exclude such Peers as have been faithful to the
Parliament from their privilege of being duly summoned to be members
of that House." The final division was 198 to 125; but there had been
a preceding division on the question whether the words "when they
shall be approved by this House" should be inserted after the word
"Parliament" in the first clause. This very ingenious amendment of
the Anti-Cromwellians had been rejected by 183 votes to 146, the
tellers for the Cromwellian majority being the Marquis of Argyle and
Thurloe, and for the minority Lord Fairfax and Lord Lambert.--Thus,
at the end of the second month of the Parliament, the victory was
clearly with Thurloe and the Government. The Protectorship had been
recognised; and the Other House also had been recognised, rather
grudgingly indeed, and not by the desired name of "The House of
Lords," but with a proviso that seemed to put that and more within
reach. It had also been ascertained in general that, in a House of
Commons larger than had been seen in Westminster for many years,
Richard's Government was stronger, on vital questions, than the
Republicans and all other Anti-Cromwellians together. For there had
been discussions affecting the foreign policy of the Protectorate,
and in these the Republicans and Anti-Cromwellians had been equally
beaten. It had been, carried, for example, on Thurloe's
representation, to persevere in the despatch of a strong fleet to the
Baltic in the interest of the Swedish King; and such a fleet, now
under Admiral Montague's command, had actually sailed before the end
of March. It was in the Sound early in April.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates, and Guizot, I. 46-72 (where
the extracts from speeches are from _Burton's Diary_); also
Commons Journals of Feb. 21 and 24; and Thurloe, VII. 636-637 and
644-645.]
In minor matters the House had shown some independence. On the 23rd
of February they had ordered the release of the Duke of Buckingham
from the imprisonment to which he had been committed by Oliver,
accepting the Duke's own word of honour, and Fairfax's bail of
£20,000, that he would not abet the enemies of the Commonwealth. So,
on the 16th of March, they had released Milton's friend, the
Republican Major-General Overton, from his four years' imprisonment,
declaring Cromwell's mere warrant for the same to have been
insufficient and illegal. This was a most popular act, and the
liberated Overton was received in London with enthusiastic ovations.
Other political prisoners of the late Protectorate were similarly
released, and, on the whole, the majority of the House, though with
all reverence for Oliver's memory, were ready to take any occasion
for signifying that his more "arbitrary" acts must be debited to
himself only. There were also distinct evidences of a disposition in
the House, due to the massive representation of the Presbyterians in
it, to question the late Protector's liking for unlimited religions
toleration. They approved heartily, it appears, of his Established
Church, and even of its breadth as including Presbyterians and
Independents; but, like preceding Parliaments, they were for a more
rigorous care for Church-orthodoxy, and more severe dealings with
"heresies and blasphemies." Quakers, Anti-Trinitarians, and Jews were
especially threatened. Here, indeed, the House meant rather to
indicate its good-will to the Protectorate than the reverse; for,
though. Richard and Henry Cromwell inherited their father's religious
liberality, and others of the Cromwellians agreed with them, not a
few were disposed, like Monk, to make a compact with the
Presbyterians for heresy-hunting part of the very programme of
Richard's Protectorate. The Toleration tenet, indeed, was perhaps
more peculiarly a tenet of the Republicans than of any other
political party, and not without strong reasons of a personal kind,
people said, on the part of some of them. Had not Mr. Henry Neville,
for example, been heard to say that he was more affected by some
parts of Cicero than by anything in the Bible? If heathenism like
that infected the Republican opposition, what could any plain honest
Christian do but support the Protectorate?[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates given, and of Feb. 26 and
April 2; Guizot, I. 103-104.]
April 1659 was the third month of the Parliament. About a hundred of
the members hitherto in attendance had then withdrawn, and the
attendances had sunk to between 150 and 270. This was the more
ominous because the struggle had now ceased to be one between the
Protector's Government and the Opposition, and had become one between
the Court Party and the Army or Wallingford-House Party for the
farther use of Thurloe's victories.
The Republicans, foiled in their own measures, had entered into
relations with the Wallingford-House magnates. True, these were not,
for the nonce, Republicans. On the contrary, they were still one wing
of the declared supporters of Richard's Protectorship, and their
chiefs all but composed that Other House the rights of which Thurloe
had vindicated so manfully against the Republicans, and which was now
therefore a working part of the Legislature. But might there not be
ways and means of breaking down the allegiance of the
Wallingford-House men to the Protectorate, their present implication
with it notwithstanding? They were primarily Army-chiefs, and only
secondarily politicians for the Protectorate; behind them was the
Army itself, charged with Republican sentiments from of old, and with
not a few important officers in it who were Republicans re-avowed;
and, besides, they were politicians for the Protectorate in an
interest of their own which quite separated them from the Court
Party. Might not these differences between the Court Party and the
Wallingford-House Party be so operated upon as to force the Court
Party into open antagonism to the Army, and so leave the
Wallingford-House men no option but to fall back upon Army
Republicanism and make the Army an agent, in spite of themselves, for
the "good Old Cause"? How well-founded was this calculation will
appear if we remember one or two facts. Cessation of Army-domination
in politics, and reliance on massive public feeling and on
constitutional methods, were now fixed principles of the Court
Party. Monk had expressed them when he advised Richard to reduce the
Army and get rid of superfluous officers, assuring him that the most
disaffected officer, once discharged, would be a very harmless
animal. Henry Cromwell had expressed the same in that letter to
Fleetwood in which he sighed for the happy time when the Army would
never be heard of except when it was fighting. Thurloe, Broghill,
Falconbridge, and the rest, were of the same general opinion; and
parts of the Army itself, they believed, had been schooled into
docility. Monk could answer for the troops and officers in Scotland,
Henry Cromwell for those in Ireland, and Lockhart for those in
Flanders. But then there was the great body of soldiers and officers
in England, with London for their rendezvous. To them abnegation of
direct influence in politics was death. It was not only their arrears
that they saw endangered, but that Army privilege of debating and
theorizing which had been asserted by Cromwell in the Civil War, and
which Cromwell afterwards, while regulating and checking it, had
never abolished. Were they to meet no more, agitate no more? Was the
great Army of the Commonwealth to be degraded, for the benefit of
this new Protector, into a mere collection of men paid for bestriding
horses and handling pikes and ramrods? So reasoned the rank and file
and the subalterns; but the chiefs, while sharing the general
feeling, had additional alarms of their own. They had left actions
behind them, done in their major-generalcies or other commands for
Cromwell, for which they might be called to account under a civilian
Protectorate, or other merely constitutional Government. There had
actually been signs in the present Parliament of a tendency to the
re-investigation of cases of military oppression and the impeachment
of selected culprits. Were the Army-men to consent, in such
circumstances, to give up their powers of self-defence and corporate
action? No! Oliver's son might deserve consideration; but Oliver's
Army had prior claims.
Hitherto, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the rest of the
Wallingford-House Party, had been content with private remonstrances
with Richard on Army grievances in general, or particular grievances
occasioned by his own exercise of Army-patronage. A saying of
Richard's in one of these conferences had been widely reported and
had given great offence. In reply to a suggestion that he was doing
wrong in appointing any but "godly" officers, he had said, "Here is
Dick Ingoldsby, who can neither pray nor preach, and yet I will trust
him before ye all." As nothing was to be made of Richard in this
private way, the Army party had resolved on another great convention
of officers in London, nominally for the consideration of Army
affairs, but really to constrain both Richard and the Parliament.
Ludlow, who had hitherto been the medium of communication between the
Republicans and the Wallingford-House men, was informed of this
proposal; and he and the other Republicans looked on with the keenest
interest. Would Richard, with his recent experience, allow the
officers to reassemble in general council? To the horror of Broghill,
Falconbridge, Thurloe, and the rest of the Court party, it was found
that, in a moment of weakness, cajoled privately by Fleetwood and
Desborough, he _had_ given the permission, without even
consulting his Council. Nothing could be done but let the convention
meet, taking care that as many officers as possible of the Court
party should be present in it. Accordingly, on the 5th of April 1659,
there were about 500 officers of all ranks at Wallingford House,
Fleetwood and Desborough at the head of one Protectoral party, and
Broghill, Viscount Howard, Falconbridge, with Whalley and Goffe,
representing the other, while among the general body there were no
one knew how many pure Republicans. The meeting having been solemnly
opened with prayer by Dr. Owen, there was a vehement speech from
Desborough. The essence of the speech was that "several sons of
Belial" had crept into the Army, corrupting its former integrity, and
that therefore he would propose that every officer should be
cashiered that would not "swear that he did believe in his conscience
that the putting to death of the late King, Charles Stuart, was
lawful and just." Amid the cheers that followed, Lords Howard and
Falconbridge (two of the denounced "sons of Belial"?) left in
disgust; but Broghill remained and opposed bravely. He disliked all
tests; but, if there was to be a test, he would propose that it
should be simply an oath "to defend the Government as it is now
established under the Protector and Parliament." If the present
meeting insisted on a test, and did not adopt that one, he would see
that it should be moved in Parliament. This, supported by Whalley and
Goffe, calmed the meeting somewhat; and, after much more speaking, in
which the necessity of a separation of the military power from the
civil was a prominent topic, the result was "_A Humble
Representation and Petition of the Officers of the Armies of England,
Scotland, and Ireland_," expressed in general and not unrespectful
terms, but conveying sufficiently the Army's demands. Presented to
Richard in Whitehall on the 6th of April, this petition was forwarded
by him to the Commons on the 8th, with a letter to the Speaker. For
more than a week no notice was taken by the House; but, the petition
having been circulated in print, with other petitions and documents
more fierce for "the good old cause," and the general council of
officers still continuing the meetings at Wallingford House, with the
excitement of sermons and prayers added to that of their debates, the
House was driven at last into that attitude of direct antagonism to
the Army in the name of the Protectorate on which both Royalists and
Republicans had calculated. Thurloe would fain have avoided this, and
had almost longed for some Cavalier outbreak to occupy the two
conflicting Protectoral parties and reunite them. But the numerous
Cavaliers in London had been well instructed and lay provokingly
still; and the management of the crisis for Richard had passed from
Thurloe to the House itself. On Monday the 18th of April, in a House
of 250, with shut doors to prevent any from leaving, it was resolved,
by 163 votes to 87, "That, during the sitting of the Parliament there
shall be no general council or meeting of the officers of the Army
without the direction, leave, and authority of his Highness the Lord
Protector and both Houses of Parliament"; and it was also resolved,
"That no person shall have or continue any command or trust in any of
the Armies or Navies of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or any of the
Dominions or Territories thereto belonging, who shall refuse to
subscribe, That he will not disturb nor interrupt the free meetings
in Parliament of any of the members of either House of Parliament, or
their freedom in their debates and counsels." The concurrence of the
Other House was desired in these votes; and the Commons, who had
noted with surprise that Hasilrig, Ludlow, Scott, and Vane, rather
took part with the Army in the debate, proceeded to the serious
consideration of the arrears of pay due to the officers and soldiers,
and of other real military grievances, in order to reconcile the
Army, if possible, to their strong Resolutions.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 633-638; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I.
112-120; Phillips, 641; Thurloe, VII. 657-658; Letters of M. de
Bordeaux to Mazarin, in Guizot, I. 361-365.]
That was not possible. Richard, urged by Broghill and others, and
strengthened by the votes of the Commons, summoned up courage to go
to the council of officers at Wallingford House next day, and, after
listening to their debates for a while, declare their meetings
dissolved. The only effect was that they dispersed themselves then,
to meet from day to day just as before, Dr. Owen and other preachers
still among them. Meanwhile, the concurrence of the Other House with
the Resolutions having been purposely delayed and all but refused,
the Commons adopted what farther measures they could for securing
Richard's control of the militia. Richard was advised by those around
him to empower them to seize Fleetwood and Desborough, and also
Lambert, whose conjunction with the Wallingford-House party was now
notorious. He hesitated. He had never done harm to anybody, he said,
and he would not have a drop of blood shed on his poor account. The
question now was between a forced dissolution of the
Wallingford-House council of officers and a dissolution of the
Parliament itself. That, in spite of Richard's objection to violence,
seemed on the eve of being decided by a murderous battle in the
streets of London. Fleetwood, summoned to Whitehall to see the
Protector, neglected the summons; and through the night between
Wednesday the 20th and Thursday the 21st of April there was a
rendezvous in and round St. James's, by Fleetwood's order, of all the
regiments in town. A counter-rendezvous, in Richard's name, was
attempted at Whitehall; but Whalley, Goffe, and Ingoldsby, who would
have commanded here and done their best, found that they had no
soldiers to command, the bulk of their own regiments, with some of
Richard's guards, having preferred the other rendezvous. What then
happened is told by Ludlow in a single sentence. "About noon," says
the sturdy democrat, "Colonel Desborough went to Mr. Richard Cromwell
at Whitehall, and told him that, if he would dissolve his Parliament,
the officers would take care of him, but that, if he refused to do
so, they would do it without him, and leave him to shift for
himself." There was some consultation, in which Broghill, Fiennes,
Thurloe, Wolseley, and Whitlocke, took part. Whitlocke, as he tells
us, was against a dissolution even in that extremity; but most of the
others thought it inevitable. Richard, therefore, reluctantly
yielded; but, as he declined to dissolve the Parliament in person, a
commission for the purpose, directed to Lord Commissioner Fiennes,
the Speaker of the Upper House, was drawn up by Thurloe, and
delivered in the night to Fleetwood and Desborough. Next day, Friday
the 22nd, when the message came to the Commons by the Black Rod to
attend in the House of Lords, there was the utmost possible
confusion. Some members who had gone out were recalled; all were
ordered to remain in their places; there was a wild hubbub of motions
and speeches, Fairfax conspicuous for his indignation; and, at
length, the House, without paying attention to the summons of the
Black Rod, adjourned itself to Monday morning at eight o'clock. The
Dissolution, therefore, had to be effected by published proclamation,
and by padlocking and guarding the doors of the House.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 639-641; Whitlocke under date April 21, 1659;
Commons Journals of April 22; Phillips, 641-642; Guizot, I.
120-128, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin appended at pp.
366-375.]
A week before the Dissolution the Parliament had estimated the public
debt, as it would stand at the end of the year then current, at a
total of £2,222,090, besides what might be due to the forces in
Flanders. Of this sum £1,747,584 was existing debt in arrears,
£393,883 was debt of the Navy running on for the year, and £80,623
was the calculated deficit for the year by the excess of the ordinary
expenditure in England, Scotland, and Ireland over the revenues from
these countries. It is interesting to note the particulars of this
last item. The annual income from England was £1,517,275, and the
annual expenses in England £1,547,788, leaving a deficit for England
of £30,513; the annual income from Scotland was £143,652, but the
outlay £307,271 (more than double the income), leaving a deficit for
Scotland of £163,619; the annual income from Ireland was £207,790,
and the outlay £346,480, leaving a deficit for Ireland of £138,690.
This would have made the total deficit, for the ordinary
administration, civil and military, of the three nations, £332,823;
but, as £252,200 of this sum would be met by special taxes on England
for the support of the Armies in Scotland and Ireland, the real
deficit was £80,623, as above. How to meet that, and the £393,883
running on for the Navy, and the arrears of £1,747,584 besides, and
the unknown amount that might be due to the Army in Flanders, was the
financial problem to be solved. Two millions and a half, it may be
said roughly, were required to set the Commonwealth clear.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, April 16, 1659.]
The late Parliament having stated the problem, but having had no time
to attempt the solution, the responsibility had descended to those
who had turned them out. It was but one form of the enormous and most
complex responsibility they had undertaken; but it was the particular
form of responsibility that had most to do in determining their
immediate proceedings. Had it been merely the administration that had
come into their hands, with the defence of the Commonwealth against
the renewed danger of a Royalist outburst at home and inburst from
abroad to take advantage of the political crash, the
Wallingford-House chiefs would probably have thought it sufficient to
constitute themselves into a military Oligarchy for maintaining and
carrying on Richard's Protectorate. Fleetwood, Desborough, and
Lambert would have been a Triumvirate in Richard's name, and the only
deliberative apparatus would have been the general council of
officers continued, or a more select Council of their number
associated with a few chosen civilians. The Triumvirs might have
given such a form to the constitution as, while securing the real
power for themselves, and not abolishing Richard, would have
satisfied or beguiled for the moment the so-called Republicanism now
again rampant among the inferior Army-men. But there was no money;
Government in any form was at a deadlock until money could be raised;
and how was that to be effected? The Wallingford-House magnates did
meditate for an instant whether they should not try to raise money by
their own authority, but concluded that the experiment would be too
desperate, and that, for this reason, if for no other, some kind of
Parliament must be at once set up.--But what Parliament? Here they
had not far to seek. For the last month or more, placards on all the
walls of London, the very cries of news-boys in the streets, had been
telling them what Parliament. We have several times quoted the phrase
"The Good Old Cause," as coming gradually into use after Oliver's
death, and passing to and fro in documents and speeches. But no one
can describe now the force and frequency of that phrase in London and
throughout England in April 1659 and for months afterwards. If two
men passed you in the street, you heard the words "the good old
cause" from one of them; every second or third pamphlet in the
booksellers' shops had "The Good Old Cause" on its title-page or
running through its text; veterans rolled out the phrase sonorously
in their nightly prayers, or went to sleep mumbling it. One notes
constantly in the history of any country this phenomenon of the
expression of a great wave of feeling in some single popular phrase,
generally worn out in a few months; but the present is a peculiarly
remarkable instance. The phrase, in itself, was ambiguous. One might
have supposed "the good old cause" to be the cause of Royalty and the
Stuarts. This was an ironical advantage; for the phrase was a
Republican, and even a Regicide, invention. It meant, as we have
passingly explained, the pure Republican constitution which had been
founded on the Regicide and which lasted till Cromwell's dissolution
of the Rump on the 20th of April, 1653. It proclaimed that Cromwell's
Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the
natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question
whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but
calling on all men, now that Oliver was dead and his greatness gone
with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to
revert to the old Commonwealth. It involved, therefore, a very exact
answer to the question which the Wallingford-House magnates were now
pondering. A Parliament was wanted: what other Parliament could it be
than the Rump restored? Let that very Assembly which Cromwell had
dissolved on the 20th of April, 1653, resume their places now, treat
the six years of interval as a dream, and carry on the
Government.--With this course prescribed to them by the very clamours
that were in the air, and pressed upon them by Ludlow, Vane,
Hasilrig, and the more strenuously Republican men of the Army-Council
itself, Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other magnates still faltered.
They hardly liked to descend from their own elevation; such
Republicanism as they had learnt of late to profess was not the old
Republicanism of Ludlow and Vane, but one admitting the supreme
magistracy of a Single Person; and they had obligations of honour,
moreover, to the present Richard. They pleaded that it was impossible
to restore the Rump, inasmuch as there were not survivors enough from
that body to make a House. Hereupon Dr. Owen, who seems to have been
extremely active in this crisis, produced in Wallingford House a
list, which he had obtained from Ludlow, of about 160 persons who had
been duly qualified (i.e. non-secluded) members of the Rump between
1648 and 1653, and were believed to be still alive. There were then
meetings for consultation at Sir Henry Vane's house, with farther
differences over some demands of the Army-magnates. They demanded the
payment of Richard's debts, ample provision for his subsistence and
dignity, and some recognition of his Protectorship; and they also
demanded that, besides the Representative House, there should be a
Select Senate or Other House. To these demands for a continuation of
the Protectorate in a limited form the Republicans could not yield,
though Ludlow, to remove obstructions, was willing to concede a
temporary Senate for definite purposes. The differences had not been
adjusted when the Wallingford-House men intimated that they were
prepared for the main step and would join with the Republicans in
restoring the Rump. This was finally arranged on the 6th of May, when
there was drawn up for the purpose "A Declaration of the Officers of
the Army," signed by the Army Secretary "by the direction of the Lord
Fleetwood and the Council of Officers," and when two deputations, one
of Army-chiefs with the Declaration in their hands, and the other of
independent Republicans, waited on old Speaker Lenthall at his house
in Covent Garden. It was for Lenthall, as the Speaker of the Rump at
its dissolution, to convoke the surviving members.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 644-649; Parl. Hist. III. 1546-7; Thomason
Pamphlets, and Chronological Catalogue of the same.]
Ludlow becomes even humorous in describing the difficulties they had
with old Lenthall. To the deputation of Republicans, which arrived
first, "he began to make many trifling excuses, pleading his age,
sickness, inability to sit long," the fact being, as Ludlow says,
that he had been one of Oliver's and Richard's courtiers, and was now
thinking of his Oliverian peerage, which would be lost if the
Protectorate lapsed into a Republic. When the military deputation
arrived, and Lambert opened the subject fully, Lenthall was still
very uneasy. "He was not fully satisfied that the death of the late
King had not put an end to the Parliament." That objection having
been scouted, and the request pressed upon him that he would at once
issue invitations to such of the old members as were in town to meet
him next morning and form a House, "he replied that he could by no
means do as we desired, having appointed a business of far greater
importance to himself, which he would not omit on any account,
because it concerned the salvation of his own soul. We then pressed
him to inform us what it might be: to which he answered that he was
preparing himself to participate of the Lord's supper, which he was
resolved to take on the next Lord's day. Upon this it was replied
that mercy is more acceptable to God than sacrifice, and that he
could not better prepare himself for the aforesaid duty than by
contributing to the public good." As he was still obdurate, the
deputations told him they would do without him. The list of members
was divided among such clerks as were at hand, and the circulars were
duly sent out.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 649-650.]
Next morning, Saturday May 7, 1659, about thirty of the members of
the old Rump were shaking hands with each other in the House of
Lords, waiting anxiously till as many more should drop in as would
make the necessary quorum of forty, before marching into the Commons.
Army officers and other spectators were in the lobbies, equally
anxious. Time passed, and a few more did drop in, including Henry
Marten, luckily remembered as in jail for debt near at hand, and
fetched thence in triumph. At length, about thirty-seven having
mustered, old Lenthall, who had spies on the spot, thought it best to
come in; and, about twelve o'clock, he led a procession of exactly
forty-two persons into the Commons House, the officers and other
spectators attending them to the doors with congratulations. The
House, having been constituted, entered at once on business, framing
a Declaration for the public suitable for the occasion, and
appointing several committees. They set apart next day, Sunday the
8th, for special religious services, with a re-inauguration sermon by
Dr. Owen.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ludlow, 651-652; Commons Journals, May 7, 1659; Parl
Hist. III. 1547-1550.]
On Monday, May 9, the small new House had to re-encounter a
difficulty which had troubled them somewhat at their first meeting on
Saturday. On that day, besides the forty-two members of the Rump who
had answered the summons, there had come to the lobbies fourteen
persons who had been members of the Long Parliament before it became
the Rump, i.e. before that famous Pride's Purge of Dec. 6-7, 1648,
which excluded 143 of the Presbyterians and other Royalists from
their seats, and so converted the Long Parliament into the more
compact body wanted for the King's Trial and the formation of the
Republic (Vol. III. pp. 696-698). The fourteen, among whom were the
Presbyterians Sir George Booth and William Prynne, had insisted on
being admitted, but had been kept out by the officers after some
altercation. But now, on Monday, several of them were back, to see
the issue of a protest that had been meanwhile sent to the Speaker on
behalf of 213 members of the Long Parliament who were in the same
general predicament of "Secluded Members"--to wit, the 143 excluded
by Pride's Purge and seventy more who had been excluded at various
times before for Royalist contumacy. Finding the doors open, three of
these unwelcome visitors went in, of whom two came out again and were
not re-admitted, but one remained. That one was William Prynne. He
sat like a ghoul among the Rumpers. No persuasion on earth could
induce him to leave. Hasilrig stormed at him, and Vane coaxed him;
but there he sat, and there he would sit! He was a member of the Long
Parliament, and no other Parliament was or could be rightfully in
existence but that; if they turned him out, it should only be by
carrying him out by his feet and shoulders! Unwilling to resort to
that method, those present got rid of the intruder by postponing
their meeting to a later hour, and taking care that, when Prynne
reappeared, he should be turned back. The House that day passed an
order that none should sit in it but genuine Rumpers, appointing a
committee to ascertain who these were and to report on dubious cases;
and the order was affixed to the doors outside. For a day or two
Prynne and others still haunted the lobbies; but at length they
desisted, Prynne taking his revenge by at once printing _The
Republicans' and Others' spurious Old Cause briefly and truly
anatomized_, and then _One Sheet, or, if you will, a Winding
Sheet, for the Good Old Cause_.[1]
[Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 138-141; Commons Journals, May 9, 1659;
Catalogue of Thomason Pamphlets. The first of the two named pamphlets
of Prynne appeared, with his name in full, May 13; the second, "by
W.P.," May 30.--Prynne continued, in subsequent pamphlets, to
attack the Rumpers for the wrong done to him and the other secluded
members in still debarring them from their seats. One was entitled
_A True and Perfect Narrative of what was done, spoken, by and
between Mr. Prynne, the old and newly-forcibly late Secluded
Members, the Army Officers, and those now sitting both in the
Commons Lobby, House, and elsewhere, on Saturday and Monday last
(the 7 and 9 of this instant May)_. Though so entitled, it did
not appear till June 13. It contained this passage against the
Bumpers:--"Themselves in divers of their printed Declarations, and
their instruments in sundry books (as JOHN GOODWIN, MARKHAM
NEEDHAM, MELTON, and others), justified, maintained, the very
highest, worst, treasonablest, execrablest, of all Popish,
Jesuitical, Unchristian, tenets, practices, treasons, as the
murthering of Christian Protestant Kings." This is a sample at once
of Prynne's style and of his accuracy. He does not take the trouble
to know the names of the persons he writes about, but plods, on
like a rhinoceros in blinkers.]
For eighteen days after the resuscitation of the Rump, and
notwithstanding their distinct announcement in their public
declaration that they were to "endeavour the settlement" of the
Commonwealth "without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers,"
Richard still lingered in Whitehall and his Protectorship remained
nominally in existence. But the Republicans made what haste they
could to put an end to that anomaly. Their difficulty lay in their
yet unadjusted differences with the Army-officers conjoined with them
in the Restoration of the Rump. Towards the removal of these
differences something was done on the 13th of May, when the House
appointed Fleetwood "Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-chief of the
land-forces in England and Scotland" (Ireland reserved), and
associated with him Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Ludlow, Hasilrig, and
Vane, in a commission of seven empowered to nominate, for approval by
the Parliament, the commissioned officers of the whole Army. Even
with, this arrangement, however, the Army-magnates were not
satisfied; and it left other differences over, which were restated
that very day in a petition and address from the whole Council of
Officers. This Petition and Address, presented to the House by a
deputation of eighteen chief officers, headed by Lambert and
Desborough, consisted of fifteen Articles, the last three of which
contained the points of most vital debate with the pure Republicans.
In Article XIII. it was petitioned that, for the Legislative, there
should be, in addition to the Popular or Representative House, "a
select Senate, co-ordinate in power." Article XIV. required also, for
the Executive; a separate Council of State. Article XV. concerned the
Cromwell family. It did not demand a continuation of the
Protectorate, but It demanded the payment by the State of all debts
contracted by Oliver or Richard in their Protectorates, the
settlement of £10,000 a year on Richard and his heirs for ever, the
settlement of a farther £10,000 a year on Richard for his life, and
the settlement of £8,000 a year for life on "his honourable mother,"
the Protectress-dowager,--all this to the end that there might
remain to posterity "a mark of the high esteem this nation hath of
the good service done by his father, our ever-renowned General." The
House was not then prepared to answer the demands of Articles XIII.
and XV., but only that of Article XIV. after a certain fashion. It
was agreed that day that there should be an executive Council of
State, to consist of thirty-one persons, ten of them not members of
Parliament, the Council to hold office till Dec. 1 next ensuing; and
at that meeting and the two next the thirty-one Councillors were duly
chosen. Then, on the 21st of May, various addresses of confidence in
the new Government having by this time come in from London and other
parts, the Republicans felt themselves strong enough to discuss the
petition of the officers, article by article, accepting most of them,
but postponing the three last and another. Without saying what they
meant to do for the Cromwell family, they had In the Interim (May 16)
appointed a committee to "take into consideration the present
condition of the eldest son of the late Lord-General Cromwell, and to
inform themselves what his estate is, and what his debts are, and how
they have been contracted, and how far he doth acquiesce in the
government of this Commonwealth." There were interviews with Richard
in Whitehall accordingly, with the result that there was brought to
the House on the 25th of May a paper signed by him, together with a
schedule of his means and debts. The paper was, in fact, an
abdication, In these terms: "Having, I hope, in some degree, learnt
rather to reverence and submit to the hand of God than to be unquiet
under it, and, as to the late providences that have fallen out
amongst us, however, in respect of the particular engagements that
lay upon me, I could not be active in making a change in the
government of these nations, yet, through the goodness of God, I can
freely acquiesce in it, being made." He promised, in conclusion, to
live peaceably under the new government, and to do all in his power
to induce those with whom he had any interest to do the same. From
the accompanying schedule it appeared that his debts, incurred by his
father or himself in the Protectorship, amounted to £29,640, and that
his own clear revenue, after deduction of annuities to his mother and
others of the family, was but £1299 a year, and that encumbered by a
private debt of £3000. The House accepted the abdication, undertook
the discharge of the debts as stated, voted £2000 at once to Mr.
Richard, referred it to a committee to consider what more could be,
done towards his "comfortable and honourable subsistence," and, for
the rest, requested him to retire from Whitehall, and "dispose of
himself as his private occasions shall require." He lingered still a
little, fearing arrest by his creditors, but did at length retire to
Hampton Court, and thence into deeper and deeper privacy, to live
fifty-three years more and become very venerable, though the more
rude of the country-people would persist in calling him "Tumble-Down
Dick." In the week of his abdication there was on the London
book-stalls a rigmarole poem on the subject, called _The World in a
Maze, or Oliver's Ghost_. It opened with this dialogue between
father and son:--
_Oliver P._: Richard.!. Richard! Richard!
_Richard_: Who calls "Richard"? 'Tis a hollow voice;
And yet perhaps it may be mine own thoughts.
_Oliver_: No: 'tis thy father risen from the grave;
Nor--would I have thee fooled, nor yet turn knave.
_Richard_: I could not help it, father.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist. III. 1551-1557;
Pamphlet, of given title, dated May 21 in MS. in the Thomason copy.]
CHAPTER I.
Second Section.
THE ANARCHY, STAGE I.: OR THE RESTORED RUMP:
MAY 25, 1859-OCT. 13, 1659.
NUMBER OF THE RESTORED RUMPERS AND LIST OF THEM: COUNCIL OP STATE OF
THE RESTORED RUMP: ANOMALOUS CHARACTER AND POSITION OP THE NEW
GOVERNMENT: MOMENTARY CHANCE OF A CIVIL WAR BETWEEN THE CROMWELLIANS
AND THE RUMPERS: CHANCE AVERTED BY THE ACQUIESCENCE OF THE LEADING
CROMWELLIANS: BEHAVIOUR OF RICHARD CROMWELL, MONK, HENRY CROMWELL,
LOCKHART, AND THURLOE, INDIVIDUALLY: BAULKED CROMWELLIANISM BECOMES
POTENTIAL ROYALISM: ENERGETIC PROCEEDINGS OF THE RESTORED RUMP: THEIR
ECCLESIASTICAL POLICY AND THEIR FOREIGN POLICY: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE
AND SPAIN: LOCKHART AT THE SCENE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS AS AMBASSADOR
FOR THE RUMP: REMODELLING AND RE-OFFICERING OF THE ARMY, NAVY, AND
MILITIA: CONFEDERACY OF OLD AND NEW ROYALISTS FOR A SIMULTANEOUS
RISING: ACTUAL RISING UNDER SIR GEORGE BOOTH IN CHESHIRE: LAMBERT
SENT TO QUELL THE INSURRECTION: PECULIAR INTRIGUES ROUND MONK AT
DALKEITH: SIR GEORGE BOOTH'S INSURRECTION CRUSHED: EXULTATION OF THE
RUMP AND ACTION TAKEN AGAINST THE CHIEF INSURGENTS AND THEIR
ASSOCIATES: QUESTION OF THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH:
CHAOS OF OPINIONS AND PROPOSALS: JAMES HARRINGTON AND HIS POLITICAL
THEORIES: THE HARRINGTON OR ROTA CLUB: DISCONTENTS IN THE ARMY:
PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE OFFICERS OF LAMBERT'S BRIGADE: SEVERE
NOTICE OF THE SAME BY THE RUMP: PETITION AND PROPOSALS OF THE
GENERAL COUNCIL OF OFFICERS: RESOLUTE ANSWERS OF THE RUMP: LAMBERT,
DESBOROUGH, AND SEVEN OTHER OFFICERS, CASHIERED: LAMBERT'S
RETALIATION AND STOPPAGE OF THE PARLIAMENT.
The Restored Rump, which had met on the 7th of May, 1659, only
forty-two strong, had very sensibly increased its numbers by the
25th, the day of Richard's abdication. In obedience to a summons sent
out to Rumpers in the country, between forty and fifty more had by
that time come in, raising the number in attendance to nearly ninety.
In subsequent months still others and others dropped in, till the
House could reckon about 122 altogether as belonging to it. The
following is the most complete list I have been able to draw out for
the whole of our present term of the existence of the Restored House.
Marks are added to each name, to signify the political course or
resting-place of its owner from his first connexion with the Long
Parliament to his present reappearance:--
The asterisk prefixed to a name denotes a _Regicide_, i.e. an
actual signer of the Death-Warrant of Charles I. (Vol. III. 720).
The contraction _Rec._ prefixed signifies that the person was
not an original member of the Long Parliament when it met in Nov.
1640, but one of the _Recruiters_ who came in at various times
afterwards to supply vacancies. Most of these came in between Aug.
1645 and the end of 1646 (Vol. III. 401-402); but there were stray
Recruiters through 1647 and 1648; nay, about _eight_ persons
were added by the Rump to itself by new writs issued after the
institution of the Commonwealth. _R_ added to a name signifies
a member of the Barebones Parliament of 1653; _O^1_ a member of
Oliver's First Parliament of Sept. 1654-Jan. 1654-5; _O^2_ a
member of Oliver's Second Parliament of Sept. 1656-Feb. 1657-8. The
addition [t] in the last case denotes that the person was one of
the Anti-Oliverians secluded at the beginning of the first Session,
but restored at the beginning of the second. _R_ denotes a
member of the Commons in Richard's late Parliament, just dissolved;
and _L_ denotes that the person had been one of Oliver's and
Richard's Lords. Other marks might have indicated the distinction
of having belonged to one, or more, or all of the Councils of State
of the Commonwealth, or to the Council of the Protectorate; but in
most cases there will be sufficient recollection of this
distinction by the reader, and references to the lists of the
Councils already given will be easy where particulars are wanted.
Aristocratic courtesy-designations of Oliverian origin are now
stripped off, so as to present the names in the form thought
correct by the restored Republic.
_Speaker_: William Lenthall (_ætat._ 68), _O^1_,
_O^2_, _L_
_Rec._ Andrews, Robert _R_
_Rec._ Anlaby, John _B_, _R_
_Rec._ Ash, James _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
_Rec._ Atkins, Alderman
_Rec._ Baker, James _R_
Barker, Col. John
_Rec._ Bennett, Col. Robert _B_, _O^1_, _R_
_Rec._ Bingham, Col. John _B_, _0^1_, _O^2_, _R_
_Rec._ Birch, Col. John _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
*_Rec._ Blagrave, Daniel _O^2_, _R_
_Rec._ Boone, Thomas _O^1_, _R_
*_Rec._ Bourchier, Sir John
Brereton, Sir Wm., Bart.
_Rec._ Brewster, Robert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
* Carew, John _B_
* Cawley, William _R_
*_Rec._ Challoner, Thomas _R_
_Rec._ Corbet, John
_Rec._ Crompton, Thomas _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
_Rec._ Darley, Henry _O^2[t]_
_Rec._ Darley, Richard _O^2[t]_
*_Rec._ Dixwell, Col. John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
_Rec._ Dormer, John
_Rec._ Dove, John
*_Rec._ Downes, Col. John
Dunch, Edmund _O^1_, _O^2_
_Rec._ Earle, Serjeant Erasmus
Ellis, Sir William _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
_Rec._ Eyre, Col. William _R_
_Rec._ Fagg, John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
_Rec._ Fielder, Col. John _R_
_Rec._ Fleetwood, Lieut.-Gen, Charles
_O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
*_Rec._ Garland, Augustine _O^1_
_Rec._ Gold, Nicholas _R_
Goodwin, Robert _R_
Goodwyn, John _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
_Rec._ Gurdon, Brampton
Gurdon, John _O^1_
Hallows, Nathaniel
Harby, Edward
_Rec._ Harrington, Sir James _O^1_
_Rec._ Harvey, Col. Edward _O^1_, _O^2[t]_
Hasilrig, Sir Arthur, Bart. _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_, _L_
_Rec._ Hay, William _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
Heveningham, William
_Rec._ Hill, Roger _R_
Holland, Cornelius _O^1_
*_Rec._ Hutchinson, Col. John
*_Rec._ Jones, Col. John (Cromwell's brother-in-law)
_O^2[t]_, _L_
_Rec._ Jones, Col. Philip _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
_Rec._ Leman, William
_Rec._ Lechmere, Nicholas _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
_Rec._ Lenthall, Sir John _R_
Lisle, Lord Commissioner _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
Lisle, Viscount Philip _B_, _L_
_Rec._ Lister, Thomas _O^1_, _O^2[t]_
*_Rec._ Livesey, Sir Michael
_Rec._ Love, Nicholas _R_
Lowry, John _R_
_Rec._ Lucy, Sir Richard, Bart., _B_, _O^1_,
_O^2[t]_, _R_
_Rec._ Ludlow, Lieut.-Gen. Edmund _R_
* Marten, Henry
_Rec._ Martin, Christopher _B_, _R_
*_Rec._ Mayne. Simon
Mildmay, Sir Henry _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
*_Rec._ Millington, Gilbert
Monson, Viscount (Irish Peer)
Morley, Col. Herbert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
_Rec._ Nelthorpe, James
_Rec._ Neville, Henry _R_
Nicholas, Robert
Nutt, John
Oldworth, Michael
Palmer, Dr. John
Pembroke, the Earl of (Earl since 1650)
Pennington, Alderman Isaac
Pickering, Sir Gilbert, Bart. _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_
_Rec._ Pigott, Gervase
Prideaux, Sir Edmund _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
* Purefoy, Col. William _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
Pury, Thomas, Senr. _O^1_, _O^2_
_Rec._ Pury, Thomas, Junr.
Pyne, Col. John _B_
_Rec._ Raleigh, Carew (son of the great Raleigh) _R_
Reynolds, Robert _R_
_Rec._ Rich, Col. Charles _R_
_Rec._ Robinson, Luke _O^1_, _O^2_
St. John, Chief Justice _L_
_Rec._ Salisbury, the Earl of _O^1_, _O^2[t]_
Salway, Major Richard _B_
*_Rec._ Say, William
*_Rec._ Scott, Thomas _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
_Rec._ Skinner, Capt. Augustine _O^1_
_Rec._ Skippon, Major-Gen. _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
_Rec._ Sidney, Col. Algernon
_Rec._ Smith, Philip
*_Rec._ Smyth, Henry
_Rec._ Strickland, Walter _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
Strickland, Sir William _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
_Rec._ Sydenham, Col. Wm. _B_, _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
*_Rec._ Temple, James
*_Rec._ Temple, Peter
_Rec._ Thompson, Col. George _R_
_Rec._ Thorpe, Serjeant Francis _O^1_, _O^2[t]_
Trenchard, John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
Trevor, Sir John _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
Vane, Sir Henry _R_
_Rec._ Wallop, Robert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
Walsingham, Sir Thomas
* Walton, Col. Valentine (Cromwell's brother-in-law)
*_Rec._ Wayte, Col. Thomas
_Rec._ Weaver, Edmund
_Rec._ Wentworth, Sir Peter
_Rec._ West, Edmund
_Rec._ Weston. Benjamin _R_
_Rec._ White, Col. William
Whitlocke, Lord Commissioner _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
Widdrington, Sir Thomas _O^1_, _O^2_
*_Rec._ Wogan, Thomas
_Rec._ Wroth, Sir Thomas _O^2_, _R_
Wylde, Chief Baron _R_[1]
[Footnote 1: I may explain the manner in which the list has been
prepared:--(1) I have gone over the Journals of the House through the
five months of its sittings--_Commons Journals_, Vol. VII. pp.
644-797--and collected the names appearing in the lists of
Committees. This certifies actual or assumed attendance, more or
less, and at one time or another. (2) I have compared the result with
a list in _Parl. Hist._, III. 1547-8. It is much less complete
than my own, giving only ninety-one names; but it helped me once or
twice. (3) For the political antecedents of the members I have
referred to Mr. Carlyle's Revised List of the Long Parliament,
appended to Vol. II. of his _Cromwell_, and to the Lists of the
Barebones Parliament, Oliver's two Parliaments, and Richard's
Parliament in Vol. III. of the _Parl. Hist._--With all my care,
I may have left errors. Once or twice, where there are several
persons of the same surname, I was doubtful as to the Christian
name. The Journals often omit that.--I have seen, since writing the
above, a folio fly-leaf, published in London in March 1660, giving
what it calls "a perfect list of the Rumpers." It includes 121 names,
and nearly corresponds with mine, but not quite--containing one or
two names not given in mine (e.g. Sir Francis Russell), and omitting
one or two I give. Effectively, I believe my own list the more
authentic.]
From this list it will be seen, in the first place, that, if Ludlow
was correct in his estimate that there were 160 old Rumpers still
alive, a good many of them did not now reappear in that capacity at
Westminster. It will be seen, farther, that nearly two-thirds of
those who did re-appear were not original members of the Long
Parliament, but Recruiters. But this is not all. While about
one-third of the total number that re-appeared, including fifteen out
of the twenty-three Regicides on the list, had been in retirement
during the intervening governments from 1653 to 1659, about
two-thirds had not kept themselves so immaculate in that interval,
but had served in the Barebones Parliament or in the Parliaments of
the Protectorate. A good many of these, indeed--e.g. Birch, John
Goodwyn, Harvey, Hasilrig, Lister, Lucy, Mildmay, Scott, and Thorpe
had done so avowedly with Republican motives; but, on the other hand,
some--e.g. Colonel Philip Jones, Pickering, Prideaux, St. John,
Skippon, the two Stricklands, Sydenham, and Whitlocke--had merged
their Republicanism in Oliverianism, had been courtiers of Cromwell,
and had taken honours from him. The Restored Rump could be described
as unanimously a Republican body, therefore, only in the sense that
many in it had never swerved from pure Republican principles, and
that the rest were willing now to go back to such. Be it observed,
finally, that the number 122 represents the hypothetical strength of
the Restored House rather than its real strength. In the only
division in the House before the day of Richard's abdication the
Journals show but forty-four as present and voting; nor do the
records of divisions through the whole duration of the House ever
show more than seventy six as thus effectively present at any one
sitting. Only five or six times are as many as sixty noted as present
and voting. One infers that many of the members, after having begun
attending, ceased to do so, from indifference, or from dislike to
what was going on.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of May 13, 1659, with the recorded
divisions in the Journals for the whole session.]
A very considerable proportion of the effective attendance in the
House must have been furnished by the presence in it of those members
who were members also of the Council of State. This body, appointed
by the House, May 13-16, to be an executive for the restored Rump
Government, consisted of twenty-one Parliamentary and ten
non-Parliamentary members. They were as follows, the asterisks again
denoting Regicides:--
Parliamentary Members
(In the order of the number of votes they obtained in the ballot).
*Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Bart.
Sir Henry Vane Colonel
*Lieut.-General Ludlow
Lieut.-General Fleetwood
Major Richard Salway
Colonel Herbert Morley
*Thomas Scott Colonel
Robert Wallop
Sir James Harrington
*Colonel Valentine Walton
*Colonel John Jones
Colonel William Sydenham
Algernon Sidney
Henry Neville
*Thomas Challoner
*Colonel John Downes
Lord Chief Justice St. John
George Thompson
Lord Commissioner Whitlocke
*Colonel John Dixwell
Robert Reynolds
Non-Parliamentary Members.
_Seven_ appointed without ballot.
Thomas, Lord Fairfax _O^1_, _R_
Major-General Lambert _O^1_, _O^2_, _R_
Colonel John Desborough _O^1_, _O^2_, _L_
Colonel James Berry _O^2_, _L_
*John Bradshaw _O^1_, _O^2[t]_, _R_
Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Bart. _B_, _O^1_,
_O^2[t]_, _R_
Sir Horatio Townshend _R_
_Three_ chosen, by ballot.
Josiah Berners _O^1_
Sir Archibald Johnstone, of Warriston _L_
Sir Robert Honeywood _R_
Fairfax was put among the non-Parliamentary ten because, though he
had been a member of the Rump (a very late Recruiter, elected Feb.
1648-9), he had retired from it before its dissolution. His
nomination now to a seat in the Council was but a compliment, for he
withdrew into Yorkshire. An exceptional appointment was that of the
Scottish Sir Archibald Johnstone of Warriston. The Restored Rump was
avowedly an English Parliament only, treating the union with Scotland
as a business yet to be consummated. The election of a single
Scotchman among the non-Parliamentary members of the Council was like
a pledge that Scottish interests should not meanwhile be neglected.
His election was by the recommendation of his friend Vane, who
probably knew that Johnstone was by this time a _bonâ fide_
Republican. More questionable appointments, from the Republican point
of view, were those of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper and Sir Horatio
Townshend. The second, a cousin of Fairfax, and one of the wealthiest
men in Norfolk, was in secret communication with Charles II., and had
express permission from him to accept the present appointment.[1]
[Footnote 1: Commons Journals, May 13-16, 1659; Markham's Fairfax,
375; Baillie's Letters, III. 430; Guizot, I. 153.]
There was one fatal absurdity in the position of the Restored Rump
Government. It came together in the name of "the good old cause," or
a pure and absolute Republic; and yet it stood there itself in
glaring contradiction to what is usually regarded, and to what itself
put forth, as the very root-principle of a pure Republic--to wit, the
Sovereignty of the People. Richard's House of Commons had been as
freely elected as any House of Commons since that of the Long
Parliament, and, as far as England and Wales were concerned, by the
same constituencies; it represented no past mood of the community,
but precisely their mood in January 1658-9; and the attendances in
the House, when it did meet, were unusually numerous. Well, in a
series of debates and votes, in which there was no concussion, this
Parliament had declared, in the main, for a continuation of the
Protectorate and the Protectoral Constitution as settled by Oliver's
Second Parliament. Hardly had this been done when, by a combination
in London between the disappointed Republicans and the Army
malcontents, the Parliament was abruptly dissolved. What then
stepped in to take its place? A small body, effectively about eighty
strong at the utmost, having no pretence of representing the
community at that time, or of being anything else than the casual
surviving rag of a Parliament of 500, the members of which had been
elected at various times, and irregularly, between 1640 and 1649.
Nay, it was not even the surviving rag of that Parliament itself, but
the rag of a stump to which that Parliament had been already reduced
in 1649 by prior military hacking and carving. What pinch of
representative virtue, for the England, Scotland, and Ireland of May
1659, or even for the non-Royalist portions of their populations, was
there in the Restored Rump? Many of them had not been in contact with
their original constituencies for ten years or more; those who had
gone back to their original constituencies, or to others, for
election to the Protectorate Parliaments, or to any of them, had by
that fact treated the rights of the Long Parliament, in its integrity
or in its last stump, as lapsed and defunct, and had appealed to the
community afresh. When that appeal had gone against them, when the
last and fullest Parliament had represented it as the will of the
people that the Protectoral system should be continued, was it not
odd that about forty of the defeated minority of that Parliament,
without consulting their constituencies, should associate themselves
with a number of others, then quite astray from any constituencies,
and with no other title than that of being Old Rumpers too, and this
for the purpose of instituting the very form of Government just
ascertained to be unpopular? It was odd _theoretically_; for,
though there were then Republicans--Milton for one--who had adopted
the principle (essentially Cromwell's too) that the government of
States cannot and ought not to go by mere multitudinous suffrage, but
may be dictated and compelled by the proper few, the Rumpers did not
profess to be Republicans of this sort. The supremacy of the People
through a Single Representative House was the deepest theoretical
tenet of most of the men who had now met to oppose the will of the
People as declared in the fullest Representative House within memory.
But, though odd theoretically, the contradiction is of a kind common
enough in History. The ultra-Republicans of the Restored Rump, whose
very definition of the right Republican system was that there ought
to be nothing in it _a priori_ whatever, were yet believers in
the indefeasible and _a priori_ authority of that Republican
system itself. In other words, so important was it that there should
be no government except by the people themselves through a
Representative House that, if the people would not govern themselves
by a Representative House in a certain particular manner, they must
not be allowed to govern themselves by a Representative House, but
must be governed by a non-representative House till they came to
their senses!
These remarks are not made speculatively, but because they express
the sentiments common throughout the British Islands at the time, and
explain what followed.
The first expectation after the usurpation of the Restored Rump had
been that there would be a civil war between the Protectoratists and
the Rumpers. For, though Fleetwood, Desborough, and the other
Army-officers at the centre, had been the agents in Richard's
downfall and had joined with the Republicans in restoring the Rump,
the chances of the Protectorate were by no means exhausted by
_their_ defection. While Richard lingered at Whitehall, his
Protectorship could not be said to be extinct, and whatever of
Cromwellianism survived anywhere apart from the central English Army
might be rallied for the rescue. There was Henry Cromwell and the
Army in Ireland; there was Monk and the Army in Scotland; there was
Lockhart and the Army in Flanders; there was the fleet under Admiral
Montague, a man marked even among Cromwellians for the ardour of his
devotion to Cromwell and his family; and there were other
Cromwellians of influence, dispersed from London by the recent
events, and carrying their resentment with them wherever they went.
Broghill and Coote were back in Ireland; Ingoldsby was on a visit to
Ireland to consult with Henry Cromwell; Falconbridge was in
country-seclusion; and the Marquis of Argyle (a Londoner and client
of the Protectorate for some years) was back furtively in Scotland,
to avoid arrest for his debts, and try new scheming. Then, if there
could be a combination of such elements, what masses of diffused
material on which to work! There was the great body of the English
Presbyterians, reconciled to Oliver's rule completely before his
death, and desiring nothing better now than a continuation of the
Protectoral system; there were the orderly and conservative classes
generally, including many Anglicans who had ceased to be Royalists;
and there were one knows not how many scattered Cromwellians, whether
in civil life or in the Army, whose Cromwellianism was, like
Montague's, less a political creed than a passionate private
hero-worship. Nor was this all. Louis XIV, and Mazarin were
Cromwellians too for the nonce, faithful to the memory of the great
man whose alliance they had courted, and ready to lend the armed aid
of France, if necessary, to the support of his dynasty. No one had
been watching the course of events in England more coolly than M. de
Bordeaux, the French Ambassador in London; and through. May and part
of June 1659 his letters to Mazarin show amply the nature of his
communications with Richard and Thurloe. "I have frequently renewed
my offers of the King's assistance," he wrote to the Cardinal on the
16th of May, nine days after the first meeting of the Restored Rump
and eleven days before Richard's abdication; and again, more
distinctly, on the 19th, "Having yesterday contrived to get an
interview with him [Thurloe] in the country, I assured him that the
King would spare neither money nor troops in order to re-establish
the Protector, if there were any likelihood of success," The
Ambassador, it is true, had conceived the bold private idea that
Louis XIV, and the Cardinal might do better by using such a fine
opportunity for an invasion and conquest of England by France on her
own account; and he had hinted as much to the Cardinal. The idea was
not encouraged; and so the position of M. de Bordeaux in London
remained that of a secret partisan of the Cromwellians, offering them
all help from France if they should engage in a civil war with the
Rumpers.[1]
[Footnote 1: Guizot, I. 141-146, with Letters of M. de Bordeaux in
the Appendix to the volume (where the dates are by the French
reckoning)--especially Letters 46, 47, 48, and 49 (pp, 381-402);
Baillie, III. 430; Phillips, 647-648.]
Before the middle of June it was evident that such a Civil War was
not to be feared. Richard himself had been quite inert in Whitehall,
and his abdication was a signal to all his partisans to give up the
cause. Even after that there were efforts or protests in his behalf
here and there, but they died away.--Monk, about whose conduct in the
crisis there had been great anxiety among the Rumpers, and who had
sulkily wanted to know at first what this "Good Old Cause" was that
they were so enthusiastic about in London, had already sounded the
Army in Scotland sufficiently to find that they would not oppose
their English brethren. A letter of adhesion to the Restored
Commonwealth by Monk and the Scottish Army had, accordingly, been
received May 18, and read in the House with great joy; and, though
there were still signs that Monk would stand a good deal on his
independence, his adhesion on any terms was an immense
gain.--Lockhart also, looking about him in Flanders, and considering
what would be best for English interests altogether, had given up all
thoughts of a revolt from the Rump by the Continental forces, and had
returned to England, early in June, to render his accounts. The
Council of the Rump, on their side, considering what was best in the
circumstances, with Dunkirk and the other results of Cromwell's
Flanders enterprise still on their hands, were glad to retain
Lockhart's services in the post of Ambassador to Louis XIV. and sent
him back, after a week or two, with re-credentials in that post from
the new Government.--There had been more uncertainty about Henry
Cromwell in Ireland. His great popularity and the conditions of the
country itself made a Cromwellian revolt there more likely than
anywhere else. But there was to be no such thing. Left by his inert
brother without direct communications, and receiving intelligence, as
he says, "only from common fame," Henry had very bravely held out to
the last, ascertaining the temper of his officers and the Army. Not
till the 15th of June was he clear as to his duty; but on that day,
having fully made up his mind, he addressed to the Speaker of the
Rump a letter worthy of himself and of the occasion. "All this
while," he wrote, "I expected directions from his Highness, by whose
authority I was placed here, still having an eye to the common peace,
by preventing all making of parties and divisions either among the
people or Army. But, hearing nothing expressly from him, and yet
having credible notice of his acquiescing in what Providence had
brought forth as to the future government of these nations, I now
think it time, lest a longer suspense should beget prejudicial
apprehensions in the minds of any, to give you this account: viz,
that I acquiesce in the present way of government, although I cannot
promise so much, affection, to the late changes as others very
honestly may. For my own part, I can say that I believe God was
present in many of your administrations before you were last
interrupted [i.e. before his Father's dissolution of them in April
1653], and may be so again; to which end I hope that those worthy
persons who have lately acknowledged such their interrupting you in
the year 1653 to have been their fault will by that sense of their
impatience be henceforth engaged to do so no more, but be the
instruments of your defence whilst you quietly search out the ways of
peace. .... Yet I must not deny but that the free submission which
many worthy, wise, and conscientious persons yielded to the late
Government under a Single Person, by several ways as well real as
verbal, satisfied me also in that frame. And, whereas my Father
(whom I hope you yet look upon as no inconsiderable instrument of
these Nations' freedom and happiness), and since him my Brother, were
constituted chief in those administrations, and that the returning to
another form hath been looked upon as an indignity to those my
nearest relations, I cannot but acknowledge my own weakness as to the
sudden digesting thereof, and my own unfitness to serve you in the
carrying on your further superstructures upon that basis. And, as I
cannot promote anything which infers the diminution of my late
Father's honour and merit, so I thank the Lord for that He hath kept
me safe in the great temptation wherewith I have been assaulted to
withdraw my affection from that Cause wherein he lived and died."
Thus beautifully and honourably did the real head of the Cromwells
then living draw down the family flag. He was in London on the 4th of
July, to attend the pleasure of the House; on which day they ordered
that it should be referred to the Council to hear his report on Irish
affairs, and then that "Colonel Henry Cromwell have liberty to retire
himself into the country, whither he shall think fit, on his own
occasions." The same day there was an arrangement for paying the
mourning expenses of Cromwell's funeral; and on the 16th the subject
of a retiring provision for Richard Cromwell was resumed. His debts,
as by former assurance, were to be discharged for him; he was to have
a protection from trouble from his creditors meanwhile; and farther
inquiry was directed into the state of his resources, with the
understanding that his income should receive such an increase as
should raise it to £10,000 a year in all.--Monk, Lockhart, and the
Cromwells themselves, having adhered to the new Government, there
could be no separate action by Montague even if he could have won the
Baltic Fleet to his will. Nor, of course, could Louis XIV. and
Mazarin do otherwise now than treat the Protectoratist cause as
extinct, and re-instruct M. de Bordeaux accordingly. He received
credentials as Ambassador from France to the new Government.[1]
[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 669-671, and 683-684; Letters of M. de
Bordeaux, in Guizot, I. 409-413; Commons Journals, June 13 and July
2, 1659.]
The Cromwellians or Protectoratists being thus no longer a party
militant, the struggle was to be a direct one between the Bumpers and
the cause of Charles II. Here, however, one has to note a most
extraordinary phenomenon. The cause of Charles II., by no exertion on
its own part, but by the mere whirl of events between May and July,
had received an enormous accession of strength. Baulked of their own.
natural purpose of a preserved Protectorate constitutionally defined
and guaranteed afresh, and resenting the outrage done to their latest
suffrages for that end, what could many of the Cromwellians do but
cease to call themselves by that now inoperative name and melt into
the ranks of the Stuartists? For the veteran Cromwellians, implicated
in the Regicide and its close accompaniments, this was, of course,
impossible. To the last breath _they_ must strive to keep out
the King; and, as they could do so no longer as Protectoratists, they
must fall in with the pure Republicans or Restored Rumpers, But for
the great body of the Cromwellians, not burdened by overwhelming
recollections of personal responsibility, there was no such
compulsion. What mattered it to the Presbyterians, or to that younger
part of the entire population which had grown into manhood since the
death of Charles I., whether Kingship, which they would willingly
enough have seen Oliver assume, should now come back to them with
the old dynasty?
All this Charles and Hyde had been observing. From May 1659 it had
been their policy to enter into communications with the more eminent
of the disappointed or baulked Cromwellians, and to assure them not
only of indemnity for the past, but of rewards and honours to any
extent, if they would now become Royalists. Monk, Montague, Howard,
Falconbridge, Broghill, and Lockhart, had all been thought of.
Applications had been made even to the two Cromwells themselves, and
particularly to Henry Cromwell. There seems to be a reference to that
fact in the close of his fine letter to the Rump Parliament. He
thanked God that he had been able to resist temptation to a course
which in _him_, at all events, would have been infamous; and,
though, he could not serve the Republican Parliament in _their_
"further superstructures," he could wish them well on the whole, and
so feel that he was remaining as true as he could be, in such
perplexed circumstances, to the cause wherein his father had lived
and died. Monk, without any such reservation, had already adhered to
the Parliament, and Charles's letter, when it did reach him, was not
even to remain in his own pocket till he should see his way more
clearly. Falconbridge and Howard, those two "sons of Belial" in
Desborongh's esteem, had meanwhile, I believe, let it be known that
they might be reckoned on by Charles, Montague and Broghill tended
that way, but were in no such haste. Lockhart had deemed it best to
enter the service of the Restored Rump, and would act honourably for
them while he remained their servant. Thurloe also, though not yet
safe from prosecution by the new Government, thought it only fair to
assist them with advices and information.[1]
[Footnote 1: Phillips, 650-651; Guizot, I. 177-178.]