Meanwhile the new Government had been stoutly at work. The spirit of

the "good old cause" was strong in the two or three scores of members

most regularly in attendance, among whom were Vane, Marten, Ludlow,

Hasilrig, Scott, Salway, Weaver, Neville, Raleigh, Lister, Walton,

Say, Downes, Morley, and John Jones. Remembering the great days of

the Commonwealth between 1649 and 1653, and not inquiring how much of

the greatness of those days had been owing to the fact that the

politicians at the centre had then a Cromwell marching over the map

for them, and winning them the victories that gave them great work to

do, they set themselves, with all their industry, courage, and

ability, to prove to the world that those great days might be renewed

without a Cromwell. The Council generally held its meetings early in

the morning, so that the Council-business might not interfere with

their attendance in the House. Johnstone of Warriston, though a

non-Parliamentary member of the Council, at once acquired high

influence in it. He, Vane, and Whitlocke, were most frequently in the

chair.

A new great seal; new Commissioners for the same (Bradshaw, Tyrrell,

and Fountain); new Judges; state of the public debts; orders for the

sale of Hampton Court and Somerset House; suspension of the sale of

Hampton Court; votes for pay of the Army and Navy; an Act of

Indemnity and Oblivion; a Bill for settling the Union with Scotland;

re-declarations of a Free Commonwealth, without Single Person,

Kingship, or House of Peers; Irish affairs; a Vote for ending the

present Parliament on the 7th of May ensuing: these mere headings

will indicate much of the miscellaneous activity of the Council, or

of the House, or of committees of the House, as far as to the end of

July. One may glance more closely at their proceedings and intentions

in two departments: (1) _Church and Religion_, On the 27th of

June, In reply to a petition from "many thousands of the free-born

people of this Commonwealth" for the abolition of Tithes, the House

voted that "the payment of Tithes shall continue as now they are,

unless this Parliament shall find out some other and more equal and

comfortable maintenance." Evidently, therefore, the Restored Rumpers

were not yet prepared to interfere materially with the

Church-Establishment as it had been left by Oliver. The petition,

however, which drew from them this declaration, is itself

significant. In the opinion of many over the country absolute

Voluntaryism in Religion was part and parcel of "the good old cause,"

and ought to be re-proclaimed as such, at once. Nor, though the

Rumpers now refused to admit that, was sympathy with the demand

wanting within their own body. The majority of the Parliament and of

its Council were, indeed, orthodox Independents or

Semi-Presbyterians, approving of Cromwell's Church policy, and

anxious to support the existing public ministry. But Vane and some

other leading Rumpers were men of mystic and extreme theological

lights, pointing in the direction of Fifth-Monarchyism, Quakerism,

and all other varieties of that fervency for Religion itself which

would destroy mere state-paid machinery in its behalf, while a few,

on the other hand, such as Neville, were cool freethinkers,

contemptuous of Church and Clergy as but an apparatus for the

prevalent superstition. For the present, it had been thought

impolitic perhaps to divide counsels in that matter, or to give

offence to the sober majority of the people by reviving the question,

so much agitated between 1649 and 1653, whether pure Republicanism in

politics did not necessarily involve absolute Voluntaryism in

Religion; but the probability is that the question was only

adjourned. In the connected question of Religious Toleration the new

Government was more free at once to give effect to strong views; and,

though it was not formally announced that unlimited Toleration was to

be the rule of the Restored Republic, this was substantially the

understanding. On the whole, Cromwell's policy in Church-matters was

merely continued. (2) _Relations with Foreign Powers_. In this

matter the rule of the new Government was a very simple one. It was

to withdraw, as speedily as possible, from all foreign entanglements.

No longer now could Charles Gustavus of Sweden calculate on help from

England. Montague's Fleet, indeed, was still in the Baltic; Meadows

was re-commissioned as envoy-in-ordinary to the Kings of Denmark and

Sweden; envoys from Sweden had audiences in London; and at length,

early in July, the importance of the Baltic business was fully

recognised by the despatch of Algernon Sidney and Sir Robert

Honeywood, two of the members of the Council of State, and Mr. Boone,

a member of the House, to act as plenipotentiaries with Montague for

the settlement of the differences between Sweden and Denmark and

between Sweden and the Dutch. The instructions, however, were to

compel the Swedish King to a pacification, and to co-operate with the

Dutch and the Danes in that interest. As regarded the Dutch

themselves, among whom Downing was grudgingly continued as Resident,

there was the most studious care for a friendly intercourse. There

was no revival now of that imperious project of the old Commonwealth

Government for a union of the two Republics which had alarmed the

Dutch and led to the great naval war with them. It was enough that

the English should mind their own affairs, and the Dutch theirs. But

the determination to have no more of Cromwell's "spirited foreign

policy" was most signally manifested in the business of the French

alliance and the war with Spain. That peace should be made with Spain

was a foregone conclusion, and circumstances were favourable. The

Spaniards, crippled by their losses in Flanders, had for some time

been making overtures of peace to the French Court; these had been

received the more willingly at last because of the uncertainties in

which Louis XIV. and Mazarin were left by Cromwell's death;

negotiations had been cleverly on foot since the beginning of the

year for a treaty between the two Catholic Powers, to include the

marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Maria Theresa; and,

though the treaty had not been concluded, preliminaries had been so

far arranged that, since May 1659, there had been a cessation of

hostilities. Thus relieved already from the trouble of carrying on

military operations in Flanders, the Restored Rumpers took steps to

get themselves included in the Treaty in progress between the two

Kings, or, if they should fail in that, to secure peace with Spain

independently. This was the main business on which Lockhart had been

re-commissioned as ambassador to the French Court, From Paris he went

to St. Jean de Luz, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where Mazarin and

the Spanish Prime Minister Don Luis de Haro were then holding their

consultations. He arrived there on the 1st of August, in such

ambassadorial pomp as he thought likely to credit his difficult

mission. The business of that mission, was to undo the work he had

done for Cromwell. Such was the will of his new masters. Dunkirk and

the rest of Cromwell's acquisitions on the Continent were only a

trouble; and, if any decent arrangement could be made for selling

them either to France or back to Spain, why not be satisfied? War

with Continental Papacy and championship of Continental Protestantism

were but expensive moonshine.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, from May to the end of July 1659; Parl.

Hist. for same term; Commons Journals of dates; Guizot, I.

165-172.]

In nothing was the Republican energy of the new Rumpers more

conspicuous than in their determination to subject all forms of the

public service to direct Parliamentary control. They would have all

rigorously in the grasp of the little Restored House itself, until

the power should be handed over to a duly constituted successor.

Hence their precaution, while nominating Fleetwood Lieutenant-General

and Commander-in-chief of the Forces in England and Scotland, of not

giving him supreme power in appointing his officers, but making him

only one of a Commission of Seven for recommending officers to the

House (May 13). Persevering in this policy, and becoming even more

stringent in it, notwithstanding the complaints of the Army-magnates

that it showed want of confidence in their integrity, the House

proceeded, May 28, to a vast remodelling of the entire Armies of

England. Scotland, and Ireland. Fleetwood was confirmed in the

Commandership-in-Chief for England and Scotland by a special Bill,

passed June 7; and by another Bill, passed June 8, reconstituting the

Commissioners for nominations of officers, it was secured not only

that such nominations should require Parliamentary approval, but also

that each commission to an officer should be signed by the Speaker in

the name of the Parliament, and delivered, if possible, to the

officer personally from the Speaker's own hands. Accordingly, on the

9th of June, Fleetwood himself was solemnly presented with a signed

transcript of the Act appointing him Commander-in-Chief in England

and Scotland; and from that day, on through the rest of June, the

whole of July, and even into August and September, much of the

business of the House consisted in passing commissions to the

officers recommended, sometimes with a rejection or substitution, and

in seeing the officers come up in batches to the Speaker to receive

their commissions one by one, each with a lecture on his duty. As

each foot-regiment, consisting of ten companies, had its colonel, its

lieutenant-colonel, its major, and its quartermaster, with seven

captains besides, and twenty subalterns, and as each horse-regiment,

consisting of six troops, had its colonel, its major, four captains

besides, six lieutenants, six cornets, and six quartermasters, one

may guess the tediousness of this process of approving nominations

and delivering commissions. About 1200 persons had to be approved and

commissioned, or, if we throw in chaplains, surgeons, &c., about 1400

in all. Nevertheless, with certain arrangements for delivering

commissions to officers at a distance, the process was carried so far

that one can make out from the Journals of the House not only the

general plan of the Remodelling, but even the names of a large

proportion of the actually appointed officers. The essence of the

scheme was, of course, that all very pronounced Cromwellians,--e.g.

Falconbridge, Howard, Ingoldsby, Whalley, Barkstead, Goffe, and

Pride,--should be thrown out of their commands, and men of the right

stamp substituted. It is to be noticed also, however, that there were

to be now properly but two _Generals_, and that the highest

officers under these, whatever had been their previous designations,

were all, with a certain courtesy exception in favour of Lambert and

Monk, to rank on one level as merely _Colonels_. As far as to

these Colonels, the result was as follows:

I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

_Commander-in-Chief_: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, CHARLES FLEETWOOD.

I. FOR, SERVICE IN ENGLAND AND WALES: 1. _Colonels of Horse

Regiments_: John Lambert (with Richard Creed for his Major), John

Desborough, James Berry (with Unton Crooke for his Major), Robert

Lilburne, Francis Hacker, John Okey, William Packer (with John

Gladman for his Major), Nathaniel Rich, Thomas Saunders, and Herbert

Morley. 2. _Colonels of Foot-Regiments_: Lieutenant-General

Fleetwood, Lambert, Robert Overton, Matthew Alured, John Hewson (with

John Duckinfield for his Lieutenant-Colonel), John Biscoe, William

Sydenham, Edward Salmon, Richard Mosse, Richard Ashfield, Sir Arthur

Hasilrig, Thomas Kelsay, John Clerk, Robert Gibbon, Robert

Barrow.--One finds, besides, certain Colonels appointed to garrison

commands: e.g. Colonel Thomas Fitch to be Governor of the Tower,

Colonel Nathaniel Whetham to be Governor of Portsmouth, Colonel Mark

Grimes to be Governor of Cardiff Overton was Governor of Hall as well

as Colonel of a Foot-Regiment; and Alured had charge of the

Life-Guard of the House and the Council at Westminster,--All these

appointments were actually made; other colonelcies probably stood

over for consideration.--In the _Journals_ Lambert is styled

"Major-General Lambert," but that was only by courtesy. He had no

commission with that title; and Ludlow makes a point of marking this

by always calling him "Colonel Lambert" only. His distinction was in

holding two colonelcies together, one of Foot and one of Horse.

II. FOR SERVICE IN SCOTLAND:--Here, probably because of Monk's

passive resistance, the reorganization was less completely carried

out; but the intention seems to have been that Monk, though in

courtesy he might still be called "General Monk," should have only,

by actual commission, the same distinction of double colonelcy that

Lambert had in England. He had a Regiment of Foot and also one of

Horse; and among the other Colonels were, or were to be, Thomas

Talbot (at Edinburgh), Timothy Wilkes (at Leith), Ralph Cobbet (at

Glasgow), Roger Sawrey (at Ayr), Charles Fairfax (at Aberdeen),

Thomas Read (at Stirling, with John Clobery for his

Lieutenant-Colonel), Henry Smith (at Inverness), John Pierson (at

Perth), the veteran Thomas Morgan of Flanders celebrity (a Dragoon

Regiment), and Philip Twistleton (a Horse Regiment). One or two of

these were substitutions for officers whom Monk preferred.

II. IRELAND.

_Commander-in-Chief_: LIEUTENANT-GENERAL EDMUND LUDLOW.

Ludlow, after having been commissioned to an English Colonelcy of

Foot, was removed to this higher post, in succession to Henry

Cromwell, July 4, not with the title of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,

but with the military title of "Lieutenant-General of Horse." For the

Civil Government of Ireland there were associated with him, under the

title of Commissioners, Colonel John Jones, William Steele, Robert

Goodwyn, Colonel Matthew Tomlinson, and Miles Corbet. Ludlow did not

go to Ireland till late in July or early in August; and he had

stipulated, in accepting the Irish command-in-chief, that he should

be at liberty to return to England on occasion.

Probably because Ludlow's recommendations from Ireland were waited

for, fewer commissions were actually issued for Ireland than for

England and Scotland. Ludlow himself, with Lambert and Monk, had the

distinction of a Colonelcy of Horse and one of Foot together; and

other Colonels appointed were Thomas Cooper, Richard Lawrence,

Alexander Brayfield, Thomas Sadler, and Henry Markham, for

Foot-Regiments, and Jerome Zanchy, Peter Wallis, and Daniel Axtell,

for Horse-Regiments. Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote,

Theophilus Jones, and others to be heard of in Ludlow's memoirs, were

still on duty in their old Colonelcies when he arrived in Ireland.

In exactly the same way was the Navy to be brought within

Parliamentary grasp. John Lawson, an assured Commonwealth's man,

having been appointed Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief in the

narrow seas (to counterbalance the Cromwellian Montague), received

his commission from the Speaker's hands on the 8th of June; such

captains and other officers for Lawson's Fleet as were at hand

received their commissions in the same manner; and commissions signed

by the Speaker were sent out to the flag-officers, captains, and

lieutenants in Montague's Baltic Fleet.--More a matter of wonder

still was the re-organization of the Militia of the Cities and

Counties of all England and Wales. The regular Army could not but

remark the extreme attention of the Parliament to the recruiting and

re-officering of this vast civilian soldiery. A Bill for settling the

Militia, brought in on the 2nd of July, passed on the 26th; and from

that time there was a stream of Militia officers from the counties,

just as of the Regulars, to receive their commissions from the

Speaker. Old Skippon was re-appointed in his natural position as

Major-General of the Militia for the City of London (July 27) and

Commander-In-Chief of all the Forces within, the Weekly Bills (Aug.

2); and Lord Mayor John Ireton was one of the City Colonels.[1]

[Footnote 1: I have compiled these lists of names, with some labour,

from the Commons Journals of May-Sept. 1659, aided by references to

Ludlow's Memoirs and other authorities for some particulars. There

may be one or two omissions in the lists of actually appointed

Colonels. Possibly also the distribution of the regiments between

England and Scotland, or between Great Britain and Ireland, may not

be absolutely correct. Perhaps that is hardly possible; for there

were shiftings of regiments between England and Ireland within the

few months under notice, and shiftings of regiments, or of parts of

regiments, between England and Scotland. I have put Overton among

the Colonels in England, because he was made Governor of Hull; but

the larger part of the regiment to which he was appointed was with

Monk in Scotland, and Overton's former military experience in high

command had been chiefly in Scotland.]

The energetic little Rump and its Council were in the midst of all

this re-organizing and re-officering of the Forces of the

Commonwealth when a demand suddenly burst upon them for the actual

service of a portion of those forces, such as they were.

After a long period of judicious quiet, Hyde and the other

Councillors of Charles abroad, in advice with the Royalists at home,

had resolved on testing the King's improved chances by a general

insurrection. The arrangements had been made chiefly by Mr. John

Mordaunt (see ante p. 337), Sir John Greenville, Sir Thomas Peyton,

Mr. Arthur Annesley, and Mr. William Legge. These five had been the

authorized commissioners for the King in England since March last in

place of the former secret commissioners of the Sealed Knot; and

Mordaunt had been in Brussels to consult with Charles. In idea at

least the arrangements had been most formidable. The conspiracy had

its network through all England and Wales, and included not only the

old Royalists, but also the more numerous Presbyterians and other

baulked Cromwellians, now known collectively as "new Royalists."

Mordaunt himself, with other friends, had undertaken Surrey; Sir

George Booth was to lead in Lancashire and Cheshire, where his

influence with the Presbyterians was boundless; old Sir Thomas

Middleton was to head the rising in Shrepshire and Flintshire; the

Earl of Stamford that in Leicestershire; Lord Willoughby of Parham

that in Suffolk; Colonel Egerton that in Staffordshire; Colonel

Rossiter that in Lincolnshire; Lord Herbert and Major-General Massey

were to rouse Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and the Welsh border;

and there were commissions from Charles to known persons in other

counties, with blank commissions besides. The Duke of Buckingham, the

Earls of Manchester, Derby, Northampton, and Oxford, Lord Fairfax,

Lord Bruce, Lord Falkland, Lord Falconbridge, Sir William Waller,

Colonel Popham, Colonel Ingoldsby, Mr. Edmund Dunch, and many others,

were all implicated, or reported as implicated. Major-General Browne

had been sounded, with a view to a rising of the London

Presbyterians. Moreover, there had been communications from Charles

himself to Admiral Montague in the Baltic, begging him to declare for

the cause, and bring his fleet, or at least his own ship, home for

use. There had been special devices also for bringing Monk into the

confederacy. "I am confident that George Monk can have no malice in

his heart against me, nor hath he done anything against me which I

cannot easily pardon," Charles had written to Sir John Greenville on

the 21st of July, authorizing him to treat with Monk, who was a

distant relative of Greenville's, and to offer him whatever reward in

lands and titles he might himself propose as the price of his

adhesion. With this letter there had gone one to be conveyed by

Greenville to Monk. "I cannot think you will decline my interest,"

Charles there said, adding various kind expressions, and offering to

leave the time and manner of Monk's declaring for him entirely to

Monk's own judgment. The letter had not yet been delivered, but much

was expected from it. Meanwhile, as it was deemed essential to the

success of the insurrection that Charles himself should come to

England, he, Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two others,

went, with all possible privacy, from Brussels to Calais. The Duke of

York was to follow them thither, or to Boulogne; and all were to

embark together.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 868-870; Phillips, 640 and 619-651; Guizot,

191-204.]

As usual, there was great bungling. On the one hand, Thurloe's means

of intelligence being still wonderfully goods, if only because the

Royalist traitor Sir Richard Willis still maintained with him the

curious compact made with Cromwell, and Thurloe's information being

at the disposal of the Rump Government, there had been time for some

precautions on their part, Through the whole of July 30 and July 31

the Council, with Whitlocke for President, were busy with

examinations. On the other hand, and chiefly through the agency of

Willis himself, doubts and hesitations had already arisen among the

confederates. It had all along been Willis's good-natured policy to

balance his treachery in revealing the Royalist plans by preventing

his friends from running upon ruin by executing those plans; and this

policy he had again been pursuing. Now, though Charles had by this

time been made aware of Sir Richard's long course of treachery, and

had privately informed Mordaunt of the extraordinary discovery, the

fact had been too little divulged to destroy the effects of Sir

Richard's counsels of wariness and delay, agreeable as these

naturally were to men fearing for their lives and estates and

remembering the failure of all previous insurrections. In short,

whatever was the cause, August 1, which had been the day fixed for a

simultaneous rising in many places, passed with far less

demonstration than had been promised. Mordaunt and a few of his

friends tried a rendezvous in Surrey, only to find it useless; in

several other places those who straggled together dispersed

themselves at once; in Gloucestershire, where Major-General Massey,

Lord Herbert, and their associates, did appear more openly, the

affair ended in the arrest or surrender of the leaders, Massey

escaping after having been taken. Only in Cheshire, where Sir George

Booth was the leader, did a considerable body rise in arms. Booth,

the Earl of Derby, Colonel Egerton, and a number of others, having

met at Warrington, issued a proclamation in which no mention was made

of the King, but it was merely declared that certain "Lords,

Gentlemen, and Citizens, Freeholders and Yeomen, in this once happy

nation," tired of the existing anarchy and tyranny, had resolved to

do what they could to recover liberty and free Parliamentary

Government. Hundreds and hundreds flocking to their standard, they

marched on Chester and took the city without opposition, though the

castle held out. The agitation then extended itself into Flintshire,

where the aged Sir Thomas Middleton distinguished himself by

brandishing his sword in the market-place of Wrexham and proclaiming

the King. Various castles and garrisons in the two counties fell in,

and Presbyterian Lancashire was also in commotion. Sir George Booth

found himself at the head of between 4000 and 5000 men, and it

remained to be seen whether the movement he had begun so boldly in

Cheshire, Flintshire, and Lancashire, might not spread itself

northwards, eastwards, and southwards, and so do the work of the

universal rising originally projected. It was hoped that his Majesty

himself, instead of landing in the south of England, as had been

proposed, would appear soon in the district that had so happily taken

the initiative.[1]

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 869-871; Whitlocke, IV. 355-356; Phillips,

649-652 (where Booth's Proclamation is given).]

After some hesitations among the Rumpers in London on the question

what officer should be sent against Sir George Booth, it was resolved

to send Lambert. He set out on the 6th of August, with three

regiments of horse, three of foot, one of dragoons, and a train of

artillery; and orders were sent for other forces to join him on his

march, and for bringing two regiments from Ireland and three from

Flanders. Communications were to be kept up between Lambert and the

Council at Westminster by messengers twice or thrice every day. Such

incessant communication was very necessary. Over England, Scotland,

and Ireland, the talk was of Sir George Booth's Insurrection, with

much exaggeration of its dimensions, and speculation as to its

chances. Old and new Royalists everywhere, and men who had not yet

declared themselves Royalists, were waiting for news that might

determine their course.--Above all, Monk at Dalkeith was looking

southwards with interest, and timing the arrival of each post-bag In

Edinburgh. He had then a visitor at Dalkeith, in the person of his

brother, the Rev. Mr. Nicholas Monk, minister of Kilhampton parish in

Cornwall, This gentleman had come to take home his daughter, who had

been living with Monk, a suitable husband having now been found for

her in England. But he had come on a little piece of business

besides. His Cornish living had been given him, about a year before,

by Sir John Greenville; and Sir John had thought him the very man to

be employed in bringing round Monk to the King's interest. He had,

accordingly, gone from Cornwall to London, had seen Greenville there

and received instructions, and had also consulted Dr. Thomas Clarges,

Monk's brother-in-law, and his trusty agent in London, Clarges,

without committing himself on the special subject of the mission,

easily procured a passage to Scotland by sea for Mr. Nicholas Monk.

He sailed for Leith, Aug. 5. He had not run the risk of carrying with

him the King's letters to Monk and Greenville; but he had got their

substance by heart. And so, having first sounded Monk's domestic

chaplain, Dr. John Price, who was of Royalist proclivities too, he

had opened to Monk the fact that his sole purpose In coming was not

to bring back his daughter. He told him of the King's commission to

Greenville to treat with him, of the King's letter to himself, of the

extent of the confederacy for the King in England, and of the hopes

that Sir George Booth's rising in Cheshire would yet bring out the

confederacy in its full strength. This was late at night in Dalkeith

House, when the two brothers were by themselves. "The thinking silent

General," we are told, listened and asked a few questions, but, as

usual, said not a word expressing either assent or dissent. Through

the next few days he and Dr. Price, with Dr. Thomas Gumble, the

Presbyterian chaplain to the Council in Edinburgh, and Dr. Samuel

Barrow, chief physician to the Army in Scotland, were much together

in private over a Remonstrance or Declaratory Letter, to be sent to

the ruling Junto in Westminster, "the substance of which was to

represent to them their own and the nation's dissatisfaction at the

long and continued session of this Parliament, desiring them to fill

up their members, and to proceed in establishing such rules for

future elections that the Commonwealth Government might be secured by

frequent and successive Parliaments." The letter had been drafted by

Dr. Price, agreed to at a meeting in Dr. Price's room on Sunday after

evening sermon, and signed by the four and by Adjutant Jeremiah

Smith; and Adjutant Smith was waiting for his horse to go into

Edinburgh, taking the letter with him for the signatures of other

likely officers, when Monk returned to the room and said it would be

better to wait for the next post from England. Next day the post

came, with such news that the letter was burnt and all concerned in

it were enjoined to secrecy.--The news was that Sir George Booth's

Insurrection had been totally and easily crushed by Lambert (August

17-19). Colonel Egerton and other prisoners of importance had been

taken; Sir Thomas Middleton had capitulated; Sir George Booth himself

and the Earl of Derby had escaped, but only to be taken a few days

afterwards.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 356-359; Phillips, 652; Skinner's Life of

Monk, 90-104; Wood's Ath., IV. 815; Phillips, 652-653.]

At Westminster, where the good news was received Aug. 20, and more

fully Aug. 22 and Aug. 23, all was exultation. A jewel worth £1000

was voted to Lambert, and there were to be rewards to his officers

and soldiers out of the estates of the delinquents. Since Lambert had

gone, there had been farther searches after delinquents; and, through

the rest of August and the whole of September, both the Council and

the House proceeded with inquiries and examinations relating to the

Insurrection. Among those committed to the Tower, besides Sir George

Booth and Lord Herbert, were the Earl of Oxford, Sir William Waller

("upon suspicion of high treason," aggravated by his refusal to

pledge his honour not to act against the Government), Lord

Falconbridge (discharged on bail of £10,000, Oct. 8), and Sir Thomas

Leventhorpe. The Earl of Derby, the Earl of Chesterfield, and Lord

Willoughby of Parham, in custody in the country, were to be brought

to London; proclamations were out against Mordaunt and Massey; and

the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Henry Yelverton, the poet Davenant, the

Earl of Stamford, Denzil Holies, and many others, including some

Presbyterian ministers, were under temporary arrest or otherwise in

trouble. Vane and Hasilrig conducted the inquiries as cautiously as

possible, and with every desire not to multiply prosecutions too

much. Thus, Admiral Montague, who had suddenly left the Baltic with

his whole fleet, against the will and in spite of the remonstrances

of his fellow-plenipotentiaries, Sidney, Honeywood, and Boone, and

who arrived off the English coast Sept. 10, only to know that the

Royalist revolt was at an end, and that any intentions he may have

had in connexion with it must be concealed, was not called in

question for his strange conduct. He came boldly to London, reported

himself to the Council of State, explained that he had come back for

provisions, &c., and was more or less believed.--For, in fact, the

Council itself, and the House itself, contained more open culprits.

Sir Horatio Townshend had shown himself in his true colours, and had

been among the first apprehended; and, though the wily Sir Anthony

Ashley Cooper cleared himself before a committee of the Council

appointed to investigate a charge against him, strong suspicions

remained. On the 8th of August, just after Lambert had marched

against Booth, there had been a call of the House with the result

that Mr. Peter Brooke and Mr, Edmund Dunch, two members who had never

attended and about whom there were evil reports, were fined £100

each; and on the 13th of September, while Dunch's fine was remitted

on explanations given, Brooke, who had actually been in arms with

Booth, was brought to the bar of the House in custody, disabled from

sitting in Parliament, and sent to the Tower on a charge of high

treason. Again, on the 30th of September, there was a call of the

House, when fines of £100 were inflicted on Henry Arthington

(_Rec., O²_), John Carew (*_Rec., B_), Thomas Mackworth

(_Rec., O¹, O², R_), Alexander Popham (_O^1, O^2, R_), Richard

Norton (_Rec., B, O^1, O^2, R_), and John Stephens (_Rec.,

R_). These six, I imagine, were so punished as having never

attended the House, and as notoriously contumacious or disaffected.

But the House took the opportunity of punishing with smaller fines,

ranging from £5 to £40, twenty-five members who had been attending of

late too negligently; among whom were Lord Chief Justice St. John,

Viscount Lisle, Lord Commissioner Lisle, Colonel Hutchinson, and

Colonel Philip Jones. At the same time they made an example of

Major-General Harrison (*_Rec., O^1, R_). He, of course, had

never attended in the Restored Rump, for the very good reason that he

had been Cromwell's chief aider and abettor in the dissolution of the

Rump in April 1653. Remembering that fact, the House now ejected him

altogether, and declared him incapable of ever sitting in a

Parliament. There was, of course, no suspicion of _his_

complicity with the Royalists, nor of the complicity of many that had

been fined £5 or £20. The House, in its hour of triumph, was merely

settling all scores together.--In what high spirits Lambert's victory

had put the Rumpers appears from the fact that the House ordered the

release of the Quaker James Nayler at last (Sept. 8), and from such

half-jocular entries in the Order Books of the Council (Aug. 22 _et

seq._) as that Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Neville, or some other member

of the Council, or Mr. Brewster, a member of the Parliament, should

"have a fat buck of this season" out of the New Forest, Hampton Court

Park, or some other deer-preserve of the Commonwealth. The

attendances in the Council through August and September averaged from

twelve to sixteen, and generally included Whitlocke, Vane, Bradshaw,

Hasilrig, Scott, Johnstone of Warriston, Neville, Salway, Walton,

Berry, and Sydenham. Fleetwood and Desborough were more rarely

present.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates and of Aug. 25 and Sept. 14

(Ashley Cooper); Whitlocke, IV. 355-362; Thurloe, VII. 731-734

(about Montague); and Order Books of Council of State from Aug. 11

to the end of September 1659. There is a gap in the series of the

Order Books, as preserved in the Record Office, between Sept. 2,

1658, the day before Oliver's death and Aug. 11, 1659. After Oct.

25, 1659, there is again a gap.]

Precisely in this time of triumph after Lambert's success did the

Rumpers find leisure to address themselves to the question of the

Form of Government they were to set up in the Commonwealth before

retiring from the scene themselves. It was on the 8th of September

that, after some previous debates in the House, it was referred to a

committee of twenty-nine "to prepare something to be offered to the

House in order to the settlement of the Government of this

Commonwealth." The Committee was to sit from day to day, and to

report on or before the 10th of October. Vane was named first on the

Committee, which included also Hasilrig, Whitlocke, Marten, Neville,

Fleetwood, Sydenham, Salway, Scott, Chief Justice St. John, Downes,

Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering. What a work for a Committee!

It was predetermined, of course, that the Constitution they were to

concoct was to be one suitable for a Free Commonwealth or Republic,

without King, Single Person of any other denomination, or House of

Lords; but, even within that prelimitation, what a range of

possibilities! Nor were the Committee to be perplexed only by the

varieties of their own inventiveness in the art of

constitution-making. All the theorists and ideologists of England,

Scotland, and Ireland, were on the alert to help them, Ludlow's

summary of the various proposals made within the Committee itself, or

pressed upon it from the outside, is worth quoting. "At this time,"

he says, "the opinions of men were much divided concerning a Form of

Government to be established amongst us. The great officers of the

Army, as I said before, were for a Select Standing Senate, to be

joined to the Representative of the People. Others laboured to have

the supreme authority to consist of an Assembly chosen by the People,

and a Council of State to be chosen by that Assembly, to be vested

with executive power, and accountable to that which should next

succeed, at which time the power of the said Council should

determine. Some were desirous to have a Representative of the People

constantly sitting, but changed by a perpetual rotation. Others

proposed that there might be joined to the Popular Assembly a select

number of men in the nature of the Lacedæmonian Ephori, who should

have a negative in things wherein the essentials of the Government

should be concerned, such as the exclusion of a Single Person,

touching Liberty of Conscience, alteration of the Constitution, and

other things of the last importance to the State. Some were of

opinion that it would be most conducive to the public happiness if

there might be two Councils chosen by the People, the one to consist

of about 300, and to have the power only of debating and proposing

laws, the other to be in number about 1000, and to have the power

finally to resolve and determine--every year a third part to go out

and others to be chosen in their places." There were differences,

Ludlow adds, as to the proper composition of the body that should

consider and frame the new Constitution. Some were for referring the

deliberation to twenty Parliament men and ten representatives of the

Army, and proposed that, when these had agreed on a model, it should

be submitted first to the whole Army in a grand rendezvous.

Parliament, however, had settled the method of procedure so far by

appointing the present Committee.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of Sept. 8, 1659; Thomason Catalogue of

Pamphlets; Ludlow, 674-676.]

Of the varieties of political theorists glanced at by Ludlow the most

famous at this time were the Harringtonians or Rota-men. Some account

of them is here necessary.

Their chief or founder was James Harrington, quite a different person

from the "Sir James Harrington" now of the Council of State. He was

the "Mr. James Harrington" who had been one of the grooms of the

bedchamber to Charles I. in his captivity at Holmby and in the Isle

of Wight (Vol. III. p. 700). Even then he had been a political

idealist of a certain Republican fashion, and it had been part of the

King's amusement in his captivity to hold discourses with him and

draw out his views.--After the King's death, Harrington, cherishing

very affectionate recollections of his Majesty personally, had lived

for some years among his books, writing verses, translating Virgil's

Eclogues, and dreaming dreams. Especially he had been prosecuting

those speculations in the science of politics which had fascinated

him since his student days at Oxford. He read Histories; he studied

and digested the political writings of Aristotle, Plato,

Macchiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and others; he added observations of

his own, collected during his extensive travels in France, Germany,

and Italy; he admired highly the constitution of the Venetian

Republic, and derived hints from it; and, altogether, the result was

that he came forth from his seclusion with a more perfect theory and

ideal of a body-politic, as he believed, than had yet been explained

to the world. He had convinced himself "that no government is of so

accidental or arbitrary an institution as people are apt to imagine,

there being in societies natural causes producing their necessary

effects, as well as in the earth or the air"; and one of these

natural causes he had discovered in the great principle or axiom

"that Empire follows the Balance of Property." The troubles and

confusions In England for the last few ages were to be attributed, he

thought, not so much to faults in the governors or in the governed as

to a change in the balance of property, dating from the reign of

Henry VII., which had gradually shifted the weight of affairs from

the King and Lords to the Commons. But all could be put right by

adopting a true model. It must not be an arbitrary monarchy, or a

mixed monarchy, or a mere democracy as vulgarly understood, or any

other of the make-shift constitutions of the past, but something

worthy of being called a Free and Equal Commonwealth, and yet

conserving what was genuine and natural in rank or aristocracy. The

basis must be a systematic classification of the community in

accordance with facts and needs, and the arrangements such as to give

full liberty to all, while distributing power among all in such ways

and proportions as to keep the balance eternally even and make

factions and contests impossible. These arrangements, as he had

schemed them out, were to be very numerous and complicated, every

kind of social assemblage or activity, from the most local and

parochial to the most general and national, having an exact machinery

provided for it; but two all-pervading principles were to be election

by Ballot and rotation of Eligibility.--Harrington's ideal had been

set forth in a thin folio volume, entitled _The Commonwealth of

Oceana_, published in 1656, and dedicated to Cromwell. The book

was in the form of a political romance, with high-flown dialogues,

and a very fantastic nomenclature for his proposed dignities and

institutions, throwing the whole into the air of poetic or literary

whimsy. There was, however, an elaborate exposition of the system and

process of the Ballot. Though too fantastic for direct effect, the

book had been a good deal talked of, and had procured for the author

not only a considerable reputation, but also some following of

disciples. One of these, and his intimate friend, was the Republican

free-thinker Henry Neville. There had also been some criticisms by

opponents, Royalist and Republican; in answer to which Harrington, in

1658, had published a second treatise, called _The Prerogative of

Popular Government_, re-interpreting and vindicating the doctrines

of the _Oceana_, but more in a style of direct

dissertation.--The Harringtonians were by this time pretty numerous.

Besides Neville there were perhaps six or eight of them among the

Rumpers themselves. Why, then, should there not be an effort to

impregnate the "Good Old Cause," sadly in need of new impregnation of

some kind, with a few of the essential Harringtonian principles? By

Neville's means the effort had been actually made in the Parliament.

On the 6th of July there had been presented a petition from "divers

well-affected persons," to which the petitioners "might have had many

thousand hands" besides their own, had they not preferred relying on

the inherent strength of their case. The answer of the House, through

the Speaker, had been most gracious. They perceived that this was a

petition "without any private ends and only for public interest"; and

they assured the petitioners that the business to which the petition

referred, viz. the settlement of a Constitution for the Commonwealth,

was one in which the House intended "to go forward." There is nothing

in the Journals to indicate the nature of the petition; but it had

been drawn up by Harrington and may be read in his Works. It abjured,

in the strongest terms, Kingship or Single-Person Sovereignty in any

form, and particularly "the interest of the late King's son"; but it

represented the existing state of things as chaotic, and urged the

adoption of a definite Constitution for England, the legislative

part of which should consist of two Parliamentary Houses, both to be

elected by the whole body of the People. One was to contain about 300

members, and was to have the power of debating and propounding laws;

the other was to be much larger, and was to pass or reject the laws

so propounded. Great stress was laid on Rotation in the elections to

both. "There cannot," said the petitioners, "be a union of the

interests of a whole nation in the Government where those that shall

sometimes govern be not also sometimes in the condition of the

governed"; and hence they proposed that annually a third part of each

of the two Houses should wheel out of the House, not to be

re-eligible for a considerable period, and their places to be taken

by newly elected members. Thus every third year the stuff of each

House would be entirely changed.--Not content with petitioning

Parliament, the Harringtonians disseminated their ideas vigorously

through the press. _A Discourse showing that the spirit of a

Parliament with a Council in the intervals is not to be trusted for a

Settlement, lest it introduce Monarchy_, was a pamphlet of

Harrington's, published July 28; another, published Aug. 31, was

entitled _Aphorisms Political_, and consisted of a series of

brief propositions: e.g. "Nature is of God," "The Union with

Scotland, as it is vulgarly discoursed of, is destructive both to the

hopes of a Commonwealth and to Liberty in Scotland." There were to be

other and still other publications, by Harrington or his disciples,

through the rest of the year, including, for popular effect, a copper

engraving of an Assembly in full session, watching the dropping of

noble voting-balls into splendid urns. But this was not all. The

Harringtonians set up their famous debating club, called _The

Rota_. "In 1659, in the beginning of Michaelmas term," says

Anthony Wood, "they had every night a meeting at the then Turk's

Head in the New Palace Yard at Westminster (the next house to the

stairs where people take water), called Miles's coffee-house--to

which place their disciples and virtuosi would commonly then repair:

and their discourses about Government and of ordering of a

Commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart that ever were heard,

for the arguments in the Parliament House were but flat to those.

This gang had a balloting box, and balloted how things should be

carried, by way of _tentamens_; which being not used or known in

England before upon this account, the room every evening was very

full. Besides our author and H. Neville, who were the prime men of

this club, were Cyriack Skinner, ... (which Skinner sometimes held

the chair), Major John Wildman, Charles Wolseley of Staffordshire,

Rog. Coke, Will. Poulteney, afterwards a knight (who sometimes held

the chair), Joh. Hoskyns, Joh. Aubrey, Maximilian Pettie of Tetsworth

in Oxfordshire, a very able man in these matters, ... Mich. Mallet,

Ph. Carteret of the Isle of Guernsey, Franc. Cradock a merchant, Hen.

Ford, Major Venner, ... Tho. Marriett of Warwickshire, Henry Croone a

physician, Edward Bagshaw of Christ Church, and sometimes Rob. Wood

of Linc. Coll., and James Arderne, then or soon afterwards a divine,

with many others, besides antagonists and auditors of note whom I

cannot now name. Dr. Will. Petty was a Rota-man, and would sometimes

trouble Ja. Harrington in his Club; and one Stafford, a gent. of

Northamptonshire, who used to be an auditor, did with his gang come

among them one evening very mellow from the tavern, and did much

affront the junto, and tore in pieces their orders and minutes. The

soldiers who commonly were there, as auditors and spectators, would

have kicked them down stairs; but Harrington's moderation and

persuasion hindered them. The doctrine was very taking, and the more

because as to human foresight there was no possibility of the King's

return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this design of

rotation and ballotting, as being against their power. Eight or ten

were for it." By Wood's dating in this passage, the Harrington or

Rota Club must have been in full operation shortly after the

appointment, Sept. 8, of the great Committee of Parliament on the new

Constitution. Neville was one of that Committee, and the popularity

of the Club among the soldiers and citizens must have strengthened

his hands in the Committee. Indeed for five months the Rota Club was

to be one of the busiest and most attractive institutions in London,

yielding more amusement of an intellectual kind than any such

meetings as those of the few physicists left in London to be the

nucleus of the future Royal Society. It is worthy of remark that

Harrington and the chief Harringtonians looked with contempt on these

physical philosophers. What were _their_ occupations over drugs,

water-tubs, and the viscera of frogs, compared with great researches

into human nature and plans for the government of states? Dr. William

Petty, who belonged to both bodies, seems to have taken pleasure in

troubling the Rota with his doubts and interrogatives.[1]

[Footnote 1: Harrington's Works (large folio, 1727), with Toland's

Life of Harrington (1699) prefixed; Wood's Ath., III. 1115-1126;

Commons Journals, July 6, 1659; Catalogue of the Thomason Pamphlets

(for dates), with inspection of first editions of some of

Harrington's Pamphlets in the Thomason Collection.]

While the Rota was holding its first meetings, the Rump and the

Wallingford-House Party were again in deadly quarrel. More and more

the resolute proceedings of the pure Republicans for subjecting the

Army completely to the Parliament had alienated the Army magnates.

The reviewing by Parliament of all nominations for commissions, the

discharging of this officer and the bringing in of that, the

delivering out of the commissions by the Speaker to the officers

individually, were brooded over as insults. What was the intrinsic

worth of this little so-called Parliament, what were its rights, that

it should so treat the Army that had set it up, and one company of

which could turn it out of doors in five minutes? Though brooding

thus, the Army chiefs had contented themselves with rare attendance

in the House or the Council, and had made no active demonstration.

They were perhaps doubtful whether the spirit of submission to the

Parliament might not be now pretty general among the inferior

officers, all with their bran-new commissions from the Speaker

himself. But the insurrection of Sir George Booth, and the march of

Lambert's brigade into Cheshire to quell it, and the quick and signal

success of that enterprise, had given them the opportunity of testing

the Army's real feelings. Had not the Array now again a title to

remember that it ought to be something more than a mere instrument of

the existing civil authority? Was it not still the old English Army,

always doing the real hard work of the State, and entitled therefore

to some real voice in State-affairs? Where would the Rump have been,

where would the Republic have been, but for this service of Lambert's

brigade? These were the questions asked in Lambert's brigade itself,

more free to put such questions and to discuss them because of the

distance from London; but there were communications between Lambert's

brigade and the centre at Wallingford House, with arrangements for

concerted action.

As was fitting, the first bolt came from Lambert's brigade. At a

meeting of about fifty officers of that brigade, held at Derby on the

16th of September, it was agreed, after discussion, to appoint a

small committee to draw up the sense of the meeting in due form.

Lambert himself then came quietly to London, where he was on the

20th, with several of his leading officers. The issue of the

committee left at Derby was a petition to Parliament in the name of

"the Officers under the command of the Right Honourable the Lord

Lambert in the late northern expedition." The petition was to be

presented to Parliament when fully signed; but meanwhile a copy of it

was sent up to Colonel Ashfield, Colonel Cobbet, and

Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, then in London, to be given, with a

letter, to Fleetwood as Commander-in-chief, that so it might be

brought before the General Council of Officers. On the 22nd the

House, having heard of the nature of the Petition, required that the

original document should be forthcoming for inspection, and that

Fleetwood should at once produce his copy. The copy sufficed for all

purposes of information. The Petition consisted of a Preamble and

five Articles. It was full of a spirit of dissatisfaction, with

complaints of the prevalence everywhere of "apostates, malignants,

and neuters"; but its specific demands were two. One was that the

semi-Cromwellian petition of the General Council of Officers at

Wallingford House of date May 12, 1659 (ante pp. 449-450), "may not be

laid asleep, but may have fresh life given unto it." The other was

that Fleetwood, whose term of office was just expiring, should be

fixed in the Commandership-in-chief, that Lambert should be made

general officer and chief commander next under him, that Desborough

should be third as chief officer of the Horse, and Monk fourth as

chief commander of the Infantry. On the 23rd these demands, and the

attitude which they signified, were discussed in the House, with shut

doors, and in great excitement, Hasilrig leading the fury. Here was

latent Cromwellianism, or threatened single-person Government over

again, the soft Fleetwood to stop the gap meanwhile, but Lambert,

once he was made general officer and nominally second, to emerge as

the new Cromwell! This was what was felt, if not said; and it was

resolved "That this House doth declare that to have any more general

officers in the Army than are already settled by the Parliament is

needless, chargeable, and dangerous to the Commonwealth." A motion

for censoring the Petition was negatived by thirty-one to twenty-five

(Neville and Scott telling for the minority); but it was ordered that

Fleetwood should communicate the Resolution to the officers of the

Army and admonish them of their irregular proceedings.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562;

Phillips, 654-656 (where the Petition itself is given).]

Wallingford House itself now took up the controversy, There were

meetings and meetings of the General Conncil of the officers,

cautious at first, but gradually swelling into a chorus of anger over

the indignity put upon their brethren of Lambert's northern

expedition. There were dissenters who wanted to wait and have Monk's

advice, but they were overborne. On the 5th of October Desborough and

some others were in the House with a petition signed by 230 officers

then about London. It consisted of a long preamble and nine

proposals. The preamble complained generally of the

misrepresentation, by some, "to evil and sinister ends," of the

petition and proposals of the faithful officers of Lambert's brigade,

and avowed the continued fidelity of the Army officers to

Commonwealth principles, their repudiation of single-person

Government, and their desire to be at one with the Parliament. The

articles did not repeat the exact demands of the petition of the

Lambert brigade, but asked for an immediate settlement somehow of the

Commandership-in-chief, for justice in all ways to the Army, and

especially for a guarantee that no officer or soldier should be

cashiered "without a due proceeding at a court-martial." The debate

on this Petition was begun on the 8th of October. The House was still

in a most resolute mood. They had received assurances from Monk of

his decided sympathies with them rather than with the

Wallingford-House Council, and they believed still in the

disinclination of many of the officers in England to follow Lambert

and Desborough to extremities. Accordingly, taking up the proposals

of the Petition one by one, they formulated answers to the first and

second on Oct. 10, and answers to the next three on the 11th, all in

a strain of high Parliamentary authority. At this point, however, the

House interrupted its consideration of the Petition to hurry through

a Bill of very vital consequence at such a juncture. It was a Bill

annulling, from and after May 7, 1659, all Acts, Orders, or

Ordinances passed by any Single Person and His Council, or by any

pretended Parliament or other pretended authority between the 19th of

April 1653 (the day before Cromwell's dissolution of the Rump) and

the 7th of May 1659 (the day of the Restoration of the Rump), except

in so far as these had been confirmed by the present Parliament, and

farther declaring it high treason for any person or persons, after

Oct. 11, 1659, to assess, levy, collect, or receive, any tax, impost,

or money contribution whatsoever, on or from the subjects of the

Commonwealth, without their consent in Parliament, or as by law might

have been done before Nov. 3, 1640. This comprehensive Act,

calculated to overawe the Army Magnates by debarring them from all

power of money-raising, had been hurried through because of signs

that nothing less would avail, if even that would now suffice. Not

only had copies of the Army Petition of the 5th been circulated in

print, but there had been letters, with copies of the Petition, to

various important officers away from London, Monk in chief, urging

them to obtain subscriptions in their regiments, and forward the same

immediately to Wallingford House. One such letter, signed by

Lambert, Desborough, Berry, Kelsay, Ashfield, Cobbet, Packer,

Barrow, and Major Creed, had been misdelivered by chance to Colonel

Okey, now on the side of the Parliament; and Okey gave it to

Hasilrig. The letter itself was one on which action might be taken,

and an incident determined the House to very decisive action indeed.

Precisely on that 11th of October when the House had formulated their

answers to the Army Petition as far as to the fifth Article, and when

they also passed the Bill so comprehensively asserting and guarding

their own sole prerogative, Mr. Nicholas Monk arrived in London from

Scotland, with powers from his brother to Dr. Clarges to let the

Parliament know that he would stand by them against the

Wallingford-House party, and would, if necessary, march into England

for their support. Next morning, Oct. 12, this news was buzzed among

the Republican leaders of the House, and with prodigious effect. The

misdelivered letter was read and discussed; and, after a division, on

the previous question, of fifty (Mildmay and Lister tellers) against

fifteen (Colonel Rich and Alderman Pennington tellers), it was

resolved "That the several commissions of these several persons, viz.

Colonel John Lambert, Colonel John Desborough, Colonel James Berry,

Colonel Thomas Kelsay, Colonel Richard Ashfield, Colonel Ealph

Cobbet, Major Richard Creed, Colonel William Packer, and Colonel

William Barrow, who have subscribed the said Letter, shall be, and

are hereby, made null and void, and they and every of them be, and

are hereby, discharged from all military employment." The House then

vested the entire government of the Army in a commission of

seven,--to wit, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Monk, Hasilrig, Colonel Walton,

Colonel Morley, and Colonel Overton, any three to be a quorum; and,

having ordered the regiments of Morley and Okey, and a part of that

of Colonel Mosse, to be on guard in Westminster through the night,

they rose with the consciousness of a bold day's work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of dates; Parl. Hist., III. 1562-8;

Phillips, 656-660; Skinner's Life of Monk, 111-113.]

Next day, Thursday Oct. 13, there was no House at all. An entry in

the Journals of the House, subsequently inserted, explains why.

"This day," runs the entry, "the late Principal Officers of the Army,

whose commissions were vacated, drew up forces in and about

Westminster, obstructed all passages both by land and water, stopped

the Speaker on his way, and placed and continued guards upon and

about the doors of the Parliament House, and so interrupted the

members from coming to the House and attending their service there."

This is a very correct summary of the incidents of more than twelve

hours. Lambert had resolved to do the feat, and he managed it in the

manner described. Morley's regiment and Mosse's regiment were

faithfully on guard round the House as ordered, and Okey would have

been there too had not his men deserted him; but the House was to

remain empty. Lambert had taken care of that by posting regiments in

an outer ring round Morley's and Mosse's, so as to block all

accesses. Speaker Lenthall, trying to pass in his coach, was stopped

by Lieutenant-Colonel Duckinfield, and turned back with civility to

his house in Covent Garden; and so with the members generally. A few

did break through and get in, among whom was Sir Peter Wentworth, who

had come by water with a stout set of boatmen. This was in the

morning; and through the rest of the day Lambert was riding about,

coming up now and then to Morley's men or Mosse's and haranguing

them. Would they suffer nine of their old officers to be disgraced

and ruined? There were waverings and slidings-off towards Lambert,

perhaps a general tendency to him; but for some hours the opposed

masses stood within pistol-shot of each other, Morley and Mosse

refusing to yield their trust, and neither side willing to begin a

battle. The citizens of London and Westminster waited the issue and

had no desire to interfere. The Council of State, however, had met in

Whitehall; all stray members of the House, though not of the Council,

had been invited to join them; and there was thus a sufficient

gathering of both parties to negotiate an agreement. Not till the

evening was this finally arranged; but then orders were sent out, in

the name of the Council of State, to the regiments on both sides to

go peaceably to their quarters. The orders were most gladly obeyed.

The information that went forth to the citizens, and that was

circulated over the country in letters, was that the Council of

Officers "had been necessitated to obstruct the sitting of the

Parliament for the present," but would themselves take all necessary

charge of the public peace till there should be a more regular

authority. In fact, the Rump had been dissolved a second time after a

restored session, of five months.[1]

[Footnote 1: Commons Journals of date; Phillips, 661; Whitlocke, IV.

364-365; Ludlow, 711 and 723-726.]

CHAPTER I.

Second Section (continued).

THE ANARCHY, STAGE II.: OR THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE INTERREGNUM: OCT.

13, 1659-DEC. 26, 1659.

THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: ITS _COMMITTEE OF SAFETY_:

BEHAVIOUR OF LUDLOW AND OTHER LEADING REPUBLICANS: DEATH OF

BRADSHAW.--ARMY-ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT: FLEETWOOD,

LAMBERT, AND DESBOROUGH THE MILITARY CHIEFS: DECLARED CHAMPIONSHIP OF

THE RUMP BY MONK IN SCOTLAND: NEGOTIATIONS OPENED WITH MONK, AND

LAMBERT SENT NORTH TO OPPOSE HIM: MONK'S MOCK TREATY WITH LAMBERT AND

THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT THROUGH COMMISSIONERS IN LONDON: HIS

PREPARATIONS MEANWHILE IN SCOTLAND: HIS ADVANCE FROM EDINBURGH TO

BERWICK: MONK'S ARMY AND LAMBERT'S.--FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE

WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT: TREATY BETWEEN FRANCE AND SPAIN:

LOCKHART: CHARLES II. AT FONTARABIA: GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT OF HIS

CHANCES IN ENGLAND.--DISCUSSIONS OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE GOVERNMENT

AS TO THE FUTURE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THE VANE PARTY

AND THE WHITLOCKE PARTY IN THESE DISCUSSIONS: JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON,

THE HARRINGTONIANS, AND LUDLOW: ATTEMPTED CONCLUSIONS.--MONK AT

COLDSTREAM: UNIVERSAL WHIRL OF OPINION IN FAVOUR OF HIM AND THE

RUMP: UTTER DISCREDIT OF THE WALLINGFORD-HOUSE RULE IN LONDON:

VACILLATION AND COLLAPSE OF FLEETWOOD: THE RUMP RESTORED A SECOND

TIME.

For about a fortnight after Lambert's _coup d'état_, the Council

of State of the Rump, having become in a manner a party to that

action, still continued to sit in Whitehall, on an understanding

with the General Council of the Officers meeting in Wallingford

House. There are preserved minutes of their sitting's to the 25th of

October, from which it appears that the Laird of Warriston was in the

chair once or twice, but Whitlocke principally. Bradshaw, who was

then a dying man, had appeared at one meeting, but only to protest

that, "being now going to his God," he must leave his testimony

against a compromise founded on perjury to the Republic. But on the

26th of October, after much consultation, the Council of State gave

place to a new Supreme Executive, chosen by the Wallingford--House

officers, and called _The Committee of Safety._ It consisted of

twenty-three persons, as follows:--

Whitlocke (made also_ Lord Keeper of the Great Seal_, Nov. 1).

Colonel Robert Bennett

Colonel James Berry

Henry Brandreth

Colonel John Clerk

Desborough

Fleetwood

Sir James Harrington

Colonel Hewson

Cornelius Holland

Alderman Ireton

Sir Archibald Johnstone of Wariston

Lambert

Henry Lawrence

Colonel Robert Lilburne

Ludlow

Major Salway

William Steele (Chancellor of Ireland)

Walter Strickland

Colonel William Sydenham

Robert Thompson

Alderman Tichbourne

Sir Henry Vane.

The combination of persons is curious. Some were mere inserted

ciphers, and others would not act. Whitlocke, who was earnestly

pressed by the officers to give to the body the weight and reputation

of his presence, had very considerable hesitations, but did consent,

chiefly on the ground, as he tells us, that he might be able to

counteract the extravagant communistic tendencies of Vane and Salway,

and so prevent mischief. It is perhaps stranger to find Vane and

Salway themselves on the list. Of late, however, Vane had been

detaching himself from the group of more intense Parliamentarians and

seeing prospects for his ideas from conjunction, rather with the

Army-men. So with Salway, Ludlow had been nominated on the new body

at a venture. Thinking he might be wanted to help the Rump in their

struggle with the Army, he had returned from Ireland, leaving Colonel

John Jones as his _locum tenens_ there; and he had not heard the

astonishing news of Lambert's action till his landing on the Welsh

coast. He had then wavered for a while between going back to Ireland

and coming on to London, but had decided for the latter. Before his

arrival in town he had heard of his nomination to the Committee of

Safety and resolved not to accept it. He was more willing than usual,

however, to make the best of circumstances; he consented even to

shake hands with Lambert when he first met him; and, though not

concealing his opinion that Lambert's act had been utterly

unjustifiable, and that a restitution of the Rump even yet was the

only proper amends, he would not go entirely with those friends of

his who were working for that end, as he thought, too wildly and

boisterously, and too much with a view to mere revenge. These were

Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, Morley, Walton, and their followers, among

whom it is no surprise to find Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. They, of

course, had been left out of the new Committee of Safety, as the open

and irreconcileable enemies of the system of things Lambert had

brought in. Bradshaw, who would have been with them, died on the 31st

of October, five days after the constitution of the Committee,

leaving surely a most troubled world.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books from Oct. 13 to Oct. 25, 1659;

Ludlow, 706-713, 716-718, and 729-731; Whitlocke, IV. 365-368;

Phillips, 662.]

Military arrangements had been made already (October 14-17) by the

Wallingford-House Council. Fleetwood had been named

Commander-in-chief of all the Armies; Lambert Major-General of the

Forces in England and Scotland; Desborough Commissary-General of the

Horse; and these three, with Vane, Berry, and Ludlow, were to be the

Committee for nominations of all Army-officers. Though this, with the

omission of Hasilrig, was the very committee the Rump had appointed

for the same business, Ludlow could not make up his mind to act on

it. Disaffected officers, such as Okey, Morley, and Alured, had been

removed from their commands; Articles of War for maintaining

discipline everywhere had been drawn out; and the Committee of

nominations was to see that the officers throughout England,

Scotland, and Ireland should be men under engagement to the

newly-established order.--It was foreseen that in this there would be

great difficulties. Even within England and Wales there might be many

officers, besides those already discharged, whose adhesion to the

Wallingford-House policy was dubious; and these had to be found out.

There was still greater uncertainty about Ireland, where Ludlow had

for some months been master for the Rump. Thither, accordingly, there

was despatched Colonel Barrow, to be an agent for the

Wallingford-House policy with Ludlow's deputy Colonel John Jones, and

with the officers of the Irish Army. But it was from Scotland that

the hurricane was expected. Monk, having offered to stand by the Rump

against the Wallingford-House party while yet the two were in

struggle, had necessarily been omitted from that fourth Generalship,

after Fleetwood, Lambert, and Desborough, to which he would doubtless

have been appointed, in conformity with one of the proposals of the

Lambert Brigade Petition of the preceding month, but for that

predeclaration of his hostility. It had been suggested, indeed, that

such an honour might pacify him; but it had been thought best to wait

for farther evidences of his state of mind, and merely to despatch

Colonel Cobbet to Scotland to give explanations to Monk himself and

to probe also the feelings of his officers and soldiers.--They had

not to wait long. No sooner had Monk heard of Lambert's _coup

d'état_ than he repeated his former determination most

emphatically, both by energetic procedure on his own Scottish ground

and by letters to all the four winds. "I am resolved, by the grace

and assistance of God, as a true Englishman," he wrote to Speaker

Lenthall from Edinburgh October 20, "to stand to and assert the

liberty and authority of Parliament; and the Army here, praised be

God, is very courageous and unanimous." There were letters to the

same effect to Fleetwood and Lambert, to Ludlow and his substitutes

in Ireland, to the commanders of the Fleet, and to many private

persons. Colonel Gobbet was not allowed to enter Scotland, but was

seized at Berwick and put in prison. In short, before October 28,

when the new Committee of Safety met for the first time in Whitehall,

it was clear that Monk had constituted himself the

antagonist-in-chief of their government, and the armed champion of

the dismissed Rump. Hasilrig, Scott, Neville, and their comrades,

were in exultation accordingly.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 366-367; Ludlow, 710-712 and 728-729;

Phillips, 663-666; Skinner's Life of Monk, 117-128; Guizot, II.

18-22.]

Two resolutions were immediately taken by the Committee of Safety. It

was resolved to attempt even then a negotiation with Monk; and it was

resolved to send Lambert north with a large force to prevent Monk's

march into England if the negotiation should fail. On the night of

the 28th of October, Monk's brother-in-law Dr. Clarges, and Colonel

Talbot, one of Monk's favourite officers, then in London, were sent

for by the Committee, and asked to undertake the mission of peace.

They willingly consented, and set out on the 29th, to be followed

within a few days by six other missionaries for the same

purpose--Colonels Whalley and Goffe for the Wallingford-House

officers, a Mr. Dean specially for Fleetwood, and three Independent

ministers, Caryl, Barker, and Hammond, on a religious account. There

were letters in plenty also from Fleetwood and others. Monk was to be

reasoned with from all points of view. But, on the 3rd of November,

Lambert also set out for York, to join Colonel Robert Lilburne there,

and gather forces to block the north of England against the

possibility of Monk's invasion.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369; Phillips, 663; Skinner, 131,

140, and 142-143; Guizot, II. 27-29.]

Monk, on his part, when Clarges and Talbot arrived in Edinburgh (Nov.

2), and Clarges had held his first long private discourse with him,

was very willing to _seem_ to negotiate, and gave Clarges his

reasons. Though he had represented his Army as unanimously with him,

that was hardly the case. The re-modelling operations of the late

Rump had perturbed his Army considerably, displacing or degrading

officers he liked, and inserting or promoting officers he did not

want. Fortunately, most of the new officers had not yet come to

their posts, and the old ones were still available. But the

regiments, or parts of regiments, in all their dispersed stations, at

Edinburgh, Leith, Dalkeith. Stirling, Perth, Glasgow, Dundee,

Aberdeen, Ayr, Inverness, and the remoter Highland outposts, had to

be manipulated, weeded of oppositionists, and pulled gradually

together; and, as it turned out, there were about 140 oppositionists

among Monk's own approved officers of all ranks. To get rid of these,

and otherwise to shape the Army to his mind, would take six weeks at

least. Then, as he told Clarges, he should be ready. His total force

would consist of ten regiments of foot (his own, Talbot's, Wilkes's,

Read's, Daniel's, Fairfax's, and those now called Overton's,

Cobbet's, Sawrey's, and Smith's), with two regiments of horse (his

own and Twistleton's) and one of dragoons (that of the redoubted

Morgan, now absent in England). By recent careful economy, he had

£70,000 in the bank: his credit with the Scots was such that he could

have more on demand; he had but to give permission, and the Scots

themselves would flock in arms to his standard. He had resolved,

however, that the performance should be in substance wholly an

English one, and that the Scots should be involved in it but

indirectly and sparingly. Additional reasons for delay were furnished

by the fact that the sympathy with Monk which he knew to exist in

England and Ireland, had not yet had due development, In short, Monk

and Clarges agreed that it would be best to fall in with the offer of

negotiation, in order to gain time; and next day (Nov. 3), at a

meeting of Monk's officers, Colonel Wilkes, Lieutenant-Colonel

Clobery, and Major Knight, were deputed to go into England as

Commissioners for a Treaty. They had certain instructions given them,

in which Monk himself "invented matter to confound their debates."

They were to insist on the restoration of the Rump, or, if the Rump

would not be restored, then on a full and free new Parliament.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 663-667, and Skinner, 133-136. Phillips's

information about Monk and his proceedings in Scotland is very full

and minute; indeed his whole account of Monk's enterprise

henceforward to the Restoration, though in form only part of a

continuation of _Baker's Chronicle_, is a contribution of

original history rather than a mere compilation. He was permitted,

as he tells us, the use of Monk's papers and those of his agents.

This part of the book, in fact, looks like a literary commission

executed for Monk.]

And so, having dispatched the commissioners, Monk continued his

colloquies with Clarges, such privileged persons as the physician Dr.

Barrow and the chaplain Dr. Gumble being admitted to some of them,

but only Clarges fathoming Monk's intentions, and he but in part.

When the Independent ministers and other envoys arrived, there was a

conference at Holyrood House at which they made speeches, Monk

listening, but keeping his own mouth shut. Once, indeed, when Mr.

Caryl warned him that war and bloodshed, if begun, would be "laid at

his door," he burst out against Lambert and his party, saying

_they_ had begun the war, and, if they continued in their

course, he would "lay them on their backs." While the Independent

ministers were yet in Edinburgh, doing their best, there was a more

welcome advent in the person of Colonel Morgan (Nov. 8). He had been

lying ill of gout at York, but had recovered so far as to be able to

come to Edinburgh as a kind of messenger to Monk from Lambert. He

delivered his message punctually enough, but told Monk he was glad to

be with him again, and would follow him implicitly whatever he did,

being "no statesman" himself. Monk was vastly pleased, looking on

Morgan, it is said, as worth more than all the 140 officers he had

lost. Morgan had, moreover, brought important communications from

Yorkshire, which led Monk to dispatch Clarges and Talbot thither to

establish an understanding with Lord Fairfax.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 667-669; Skinner, 138-140.]

Meanwhile Monk's three Commissioners had arrived at York and been in

parley with Lambert. Finding that the question of the restitution of

the Rump was involved in their instructions, he passed them on to

London, having stipulated for a truce till the result should be

known. On the 12th of November the Commissioners were in London; and

on the 15th, after three days of consultation at Wallingford House, a

treaty of nine Articles was agreed to, and signed by them on the part

of Monk and the Army in Scotland, and by Fleetwood on the part of the

Wallingford-House Council. There was great delight in Whitehall over

this result, and the Tower cannon proclaimed the happy

reconciliation between Monk and the Government. But Monk's

Commissioners had been too hasty, or had been outwitted; and Clarges,

who arrived in London that day, had come too late to stop them and

spin out the time. A pledge of both parties against Charles Stuart or

any single-person Government was in the forefront of the Treaty; and

the rest of the Articles simply admitted Monk and the officers of the

Scottish Army to a share in the Government as then going on, and in

certain arrangements which the Committee of Safety and the

Wallingford-House Council had been already devising on their own

account. Monk received the news at Haddington on the evening of Nov.

18; he returned to Edinburgh next day, "very silent and reserved";

but that day it was resolved by him, in consultation with some of his

chief officers and with Dr. Barrow, to disown the Treaty--not,

indeed, by actual rejection of any of the Articles, but on the plea

that several things had been omitted and that there must be farther

specification. For this purpose it was proposed that two

Commissioners on Monk's part should be added to the former three, and

that five Commissioners from the Army in England should meet these

and continue the Treaty at Alnwick or some other indifferent place

near Scotland. When this answer reached London, Whitlocke, who had

all along, as he tells us, protested that Monk's object was delay

only and "that the bottom of his design was to bring in the King,"

repeated more earnestly his former advice that Lambert should be

pushed on to immediate action. "His advice was not taken," says

Whitlocke, "but a new Treaty consented to by Commissioners on each

part, to be at Newcastle." From about the 20th of November that was

Lambert's headquarters, while Monk, having left a portion of his

forces behind him for necessary garrison purposes in Scotland, came

on from Edinburgh to establish himself at Berwick with the rest. He

was there before the end of the month. In the beginning of December

1659, therefore, the two Armies were all but facing each

other,--Monk's consisting now of about 6000 foot and 1400 horse and

dragoons, and Lambert's of between 4000 and 5000 horse and about

3000 foot: the excess in horse giving Lambert a great superiority. At

Monk's back, moreover, there was no effective support in case of

failure, unless by that arming of the Scots which he was unwilling to

risk, while to back Lambert there were about 20,000 more regulars in

England, besides a militia of 30,000, not to speak of the forces in

Ireland, and the regiments in Flanders. Between the two Armies all

that intervened to prevent conflict was the Treaty to be resumed at

Newcastle. Monk magnified the importance of that, but took great care

to postpone it. Wilkes, Clobery, and Knight, had not returned from

London, and were rather slow to do so and face Monk after their

blunder; and the two new Commissioners had not yet been appointed.

Meanwhile letters and messages passed between the two Armies, and

there were desertions from the one to the other.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner, 146-158; Phillips, 670-672; Whitlocke, IV.

373-377.]

All this while the London Government of the Committee of Safety had

been attending as well as they could to such general business as

belonged to them in their double capacity of supreme executive and

temporary deliberative. For, at the constitution of the body on the

26th of October, it had been agreed that they should not only

exercise the usual powers of a Council of State, but should also

prosecute that great question of the future form of the Government of

the Commonwealth which had occupied the late Rump. They were to

prosecute this question in conference, if necessary, with the chief

Army officers and others; and, if they should not come to a

conclusion within six weeks, the question was to return to the

Wallingford-House Council itself.[1]

[Footnote 1: Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of date Nov. 6, 1659

(i.e. Oct. 28 in English reckoning), in Appendix to Guizot, II.

274-278.]

In the matter of foreign relations the Committee of Safety had little

to do, the arrangements of the late Rump for withdrawing from foreign

entanglements still holding good for the present. Meadows, who had

become tired of his agency with the two Scandinavian powers, no

longer such an inspiring office as it had been under the

Protectorate, had asked the Rump more than once to recall him. He

had remained in the Baltic to as late as October, but was now back in

London, anxious about his own future and about his arrears of salary.

If the present Government should succeed, there might possibly be a

revival of the Cromwellian policy of co-operation with Charles

Gustavus, and then the services of Meadows might be again in request;

but meanwhile Algernon Sidney and the other plenipotentiaries sent by

the Rump into the Baltic, though checking the heroic Swede and

scorned by him in return, might represent the only policy yet

possible. Downing, though also much exercised by the rapid turns of

affairs, and thinking of scoundrel-like means for securing himself,

does not seem to have been so dissatisfied with his position at the

Hague as Meadows was with his in the Baltic. He had come to London

early in November; a sub-committee of the Committee of Safety had

been appointed to receive his report on present relations with the

United Provinces; and he was waiting for re-credentials. The Dutch

Ambassador Nieuport, we may add, was still in London, as also the

French Ambassador M. de Bordeaux, and other inferior foreign

residents, but all meanwhile as mere on-lookers.--One inquires with

most interest about Ambassador Lockhart. Since August, he had been at

or near St. Jean de Luz, on the borders between France and Spain,

charged, as Ambassador for the Rump, with the business of

endeavouring to have the English Commonwealth included in the great

Treaty then going on between Mazarin and the Spanish minister Don

Luis de Haro, so that, when peace had been definitely concluded

between France and Spain, there might be peace also between Spain and

the Commonwealth. There he had been received, with the utmost respect

by Mazarin and with all courtesy by Don Luis de Haro, both of them

friendly enough to the purpose of his mission for reasons of their

own. It was found, however, that the Peace between France and Spain

was a matter of sufficient complication and difficulty in itself; and

so, though it was not finally concluded and signed till the end of

November, when it took the name of _The Treaty of the Pyrenees_,

and secured, among many other things, the marriage of Louis XIV. with

the Spanish Infanta, Lockhart, knowing all to be settled, had taken

his farewell. He was in London on the 14th of November, in the very

crisis of the negotiation between Monk and the new Government, but

remained only a fortnight. Till Peace with Spain should be concluded

by some means, his true place was at Dunkirk, for the recovery of

which Spain would now certainly wrestle, while France would also bid

high for the acquisition. He left London for Dunkirk on the 1st of

December, the issue between Monk and the new Government still

undecided.--While Lockhart was on the scene of the great negotiation

between Mazarin and Luis de Haro on the Spanish border, there had

been the surprise of the arrival there of no less a person than

Charles II. himself. In August we left him waiting anxiously at

Calais, ready to embark for England on the due explosion there of the

great pre-arranged insurrection of the old Royalists and new

Royalists. He had lingered about the French coast for some time; but,

when the revolt of Sir George Booth had collapsed, the notion of a

new residence in Brussels after another of his failures had become

disagreeable to him. He did go to Brussels, but only to conceive the

idea of a trip, half of pleasure, half of speculation, to the scene

of the great diplomatic conferences. Might not his interests be

considered in the Treaty? Mazarin, who had no wish to see him at the

conferences, declined to give him a passport; but he risked the

journey _incognito_, with Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one

or two other attendants, going by a long and circuitous route, and

finding much amusement by the way. As they approached their

destination, there was an unlucky separation of the party into two,

Ormond going on ahead for inquiries and appointing a place for their

reunion. But for some days Charles and the Earl of Bristol were lost.

Ormond, who had missed them at the appointed place, had gone on to

Fontarabia, a small frontier town of Spain, and the residence of Don

Luis de Haro during the Treaty, just as St. Jean de Luz, two or three

miles off, but in the French territory, was the residence of Mazarin.

Sir Henry Bennet, the Ambassador for Charles at the Spanish Court,

was already there; and he, and Ormond, and Don Luis himself, were in

no small anxiety. At length it appeared that the fugitives, on false

information that the Treaty was already concluded, had gone into

Spain on their own account, bound for Madrid itself, and had got as

far as Saragossa. Fetched back to Fontarabia, they were received with

all politeness and state by Don Luis. But, though they remained some

time, the Treaty was so far settled that Charles found that nothing

could be done for his interests through that means. Mazarin, indeed,

resenting his intrusion, and his passage through France without

leave, refused to see him, and gave orders also that Sir Henry Bennet

should not be admitted. With only general assurances of good wishes

from the Spanish minister, a present of 7000 gold pistoles for "the

expenses of his journey," and promises of farther consideration of

his case when there should be opportunity, Charles returned through

France by Paris, and was back in Brussels in December, just about the

time when Lockhart was back in Dunkirk. They had been crossing each

other's paths and were again near neighbours.--Although the late Rump

Government had taken some alarm at Charles's visit to Fontarabia, and

had made remonstrances on the subject of his passage through France,

it was now known that there was no danger of action for Charles

either by France or by Spain. The danger, indeed, was of a more

subtle and incalculable kind, and within the Commonwealth itself. We

have seen how naturally the baulked Cromwellianism of the epoch of

the dissolution of Richard's Parliament and the overthrow of his

Protectorate tended to transmute itself into Stuartism, and how much

of the strength of Sir George Booth's insurrection consisted of new

Royalism so produced. What we have now to add is that every baulked

or defeated cause in succession within the Commonwealth yielded in

the same way potential capital for Charles. The cause of Charles was

like an ultimate refuge for all the disappointed and destitute. Those

who had not already been driven into it were ruefully or gladly

looking forward to it. Even among the extreme Rumpers or pure

Republicans, now maddened by Lambert's coup _d'état_, there were

some, Colonel Herbert Morley for one, who were feeling cautiously

for ways and means of forgiveness at Brussels. Nay, in the present

Committee of Safety and in the Wallingford-House Council associated

with it, there were some fully prepared, should this experiment also

fail, to help in a restoration of the Stuarts rather than go back

into the Republican grasp of Scott, Neville, and Hasilrig. There was

a vague common cognisance of this convergence of so many separate

currents to one final reservoir. It showed itself in mutual

accusations of that very tendency of which all were conscious. Every

party of Commonwealth's men accused every other party of a design to

bring the King in, and every party so accused repudiated the charge

with such strength of language as to beget the suspicion, "The Lady

protests too much, methinks." On the other hand, the uneasy common

consciousness disposed people to be practically somewhat tolerant.

When no one knew what might happen to himself, why should he indict

his neighbour for treason? On some such ground it may have been, as

well as to try to win grace with the Presbyterians or new Royalists,

that the present Government did not proceed with the trials of the

lords and gentlemen committed for high treason for their concern in

the late Insurrection, but released all or most of them. Lords

Northampton, Falkland, Herbert, Howard, and others had been released

November 1, and Sir George Booth himself was set at liberty on the

9th of December.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII. 708, 727, 743, 753-4, 775, and 802;

Whitlocke, IV. 369, 377, and 378; Clarendon, 872-877; Guizot, I.

211-215; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 288,

294, and 298; Order Books of Council of State, Aug. 23 and Oct. 13,

1659.]

In the matter of a new Constitution for the future the procedure of

the Committee of Safety had been not uninteresting. On the 1st of

November they had referred the subject to a sub-committee, consisting

of Vane, Whitlocke, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Salway, and Tichbourne; and on

this sub-committee Ludlow did consent to act. In fact, however, the

General Committee and the Wallingford-House Council kept along with

the Sub-Committee in the great discussion.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369, and Ludlow, 736. Whitlocke does

not here name himself as one of the sub-committee, though he names

the others; but Ludlow names him distinctly, and Whitlocke's words

afterwards (e.g., p. 376) show him to have been an active member.]

The Kingship of Charles Stuart was, of course, an utterly forbidden

idea in the deliberations. The idea of a revival of any form of the

Protectorship, whether by the recall of Richard, or by the election

of Fleetwood or Lambert, was equally forbidden, although there had

been whispers of the kind about Wallingford House, and Richard was

understood to be hovering near, in case he should be wanted. "Such a

form of Government as may best suit and comport with a Free State and

Commonwealth, without a Single Person, Kingship, or House of Peers,"

was what had been solemnly promised in the first public declaration

of the present powers; and to that all stood pledged. This, of

course, involved a Parliament. But what Parliament or what sort of

Parliament? _The late Rump reinstated at once with full

authority_, Ludlow was bound to say, and did say; but, as that was

out of the question with all the rest, he could suppose himself

outvoted on that, and go on. _Richard's late Parliament_ had

been the murmur of some outside, perhaps not the least sensible in

the main; but the suggestion passed, as meaningless without Richard

himself. _The Long Parliament as it was before it became the Rump,

i.e. with all the survivors of the illegally secluded members of

1642-1649 restored to their seats_, was a third proposal, of more

tremendous significance, that had been heard outside, and indeed had

become a wide popular cry. Inasmuch as this meant the bringing back

of the Parliament precisely as it had been before the King's trial

and the institution of the Commonwealth, with all those Presbyterians

and Royalists in it that it had been necessary to eject in mass in

order to make the King's trial and a Commonwealth possible, little

wonder that the present junto shuddered at the bare suggestion. _A

new Parliament, called by ourselves_, was the conclusion in which

they took rest. But here their debates only began. Should it be a

Parliament of one House or of two Houses? If of two Houses, should

the Second House be a select Senate of fifty or seventy, coordinate

with the larger House, as the Army-chiefs had advised the Rumpers, or

should it be a much larger body? What should be the size of the

larger House, and what the powers and relations of the two? Then,

whether of one or of two Houses, how should the Parliament be

elected? To prevent the mere inrush of a Parliament of the old and

ordinary sort, whose first act would probably be to subvert the

Commonwealth, what qualifications should be established for suffrage

and eligibility? Might it not even be advisable not to permit the

people at first full choice of their representatives, with whatever

prescribed qualifications, but to allow them only choice among

nominees sent down to them by a higher power? Should Harrington's

principle of Rotation be adopted, and, if so, to what extent?

Farther, whatever was to be the structure of the Parliament, were any

fundamentals to be laid down beforehand, as eternal principles of the

Commonwealth, which even the Parliament should be bound not to touch?

Must not the perpetuity of Republican Government itself, or

non-return to Kingship or single Chief Magistracy of any kind, be one

of these fundamentals, and Liberty of Conscience another? Nay, should

a Church Establishment and Tithes be left open questions, or should

there be some absolute pre-determination on that great subject?

Finally, when the Sub-Committee and the Committee of Safety, and the

Army officers round about, should have agreed upon all these

questions, so far as to be able to draw out a Constitution or Form of

Government sufficiently satisfactory to themselves, ought not that

Constitution to be submitted to some wider representative authority

for revision and ratification before being imposed on the People? If

so, what should that intervening and ratifying authority be?[1]

[Footnote 1: This is not a paragraph of suppositions, but the result

of a study of the actual chaos of opinion at the moment, by the help

of hints from Whitlocke, Ludlow, the letters of M. de Bordeaux, and

information in contemporary Thomason pamphlets. Strangely enough,

some of the most luminous hints come from the letters of M. de

Bordeaux. He was observing all coolly and clearly with foreign eyes,

and reporting twice a week to Mazarin.]

One can see that there were two parties among the debaters. Vane, in

his strange position at last after his many vicissitudes, had come

trailing clouds of his peculiar notions with him, and was regarded as

the advocate of wild and impracticable novelties. Not merely absolute

Liberty of Conscience and abolition of Tithes, in which Ludlow and

others went with him, but certain Millenarian or Fifth Monarchy

speculations, pointing to a glorious future over the trampled ruins

of the Church-Establishment and of much besides, were ideas which he

wanted to ingraft in some shape into the new Constitution. Here he

represented a number of enthusiasts among the subalterns of the Army

and among ex-Army men; and, indeed, it had been with some difficulty

that Major-General Harrison, the head of the Millenarians, had been

kept out of the Committee of Safety at its first formation, and so

prevented from resuming public functions after his five years of

disablement. Not having Harrison by his side, Vane could do little

more than ventilate his Millenarianism, Communism, or whatever it

was, though, as Whitlocke says, he "was hard to be satisfied and did

much stick to his own apprehensions." The leader of the more moderate

party, as against Vane, was Whitlocke himself. He represented the

Lawyers, the Established Clergy, all the more sober and conservative

spirits. Parliamentary use and wont, with no great new-fangled

inventions, but only prudent modifications and precautions;

preservation of the Established Church, the Universities, and the

existing legal system; Liberty of Conscience certainly, but so

guarded as not to give reins to Quakerism and other Sectarian

excesses: these were the recommendations of Whitlocke. The Laird of

Warriston, it appears, who was not on the Sub-Committee, took up a

position of his own in the General Committee, which was neither

Vane's nor Whitlocke's, but represented what Ludlow calls "the

Scottish interest." One of its principles was that Liberty of

Conscience should be very limited indeed. And so, through November,

while Monk was consolidating his forces in Scotland, the discussion

of the new Constitution had been straggling on in the Sub-Committee

and Committee at Whitehall, and in less authorized assemblies in the

same neighbourhood. Among these, besides a clerical conclave of

Independent ministers, such as Owen and Nye, meeting at the Savoy and

advising Whitlocke on the Church-question, one must specially

remember Harrington's Rota Club at the Turk's Head in New Palace

Yard. That institution was now in its full nightly glory, discussing

all the questions that were discussed in Whitehall and many more. It

had won by this time the crowning distinction of being a subject of

daily jokes and witticisms. In a London squib of Nov. 12, 1659,

laughing at Harrington and his Rota-men, the public were informed

that among the last "decrees and orders of the Committee of Safety of

the Commonwealth of Oceana" had been these three:--1. "That the

politic casuists of the Coffee Club in Bow Street [had the Rota

adjourned thither, or was this some other debating Club?] appoint

some of their number to instruct the Committee of Safety at Whitehall

how they shall find an invention to escape Tyburn, if ever the law be

restored; 2. That Harrington's _Aphorisms_ and other political

slips be recommended to the English Plantation in Jamaica, to try how

they will agree with that apocryphal purchase; 3. That a Levite and

an Elder be sent to survey the Government of the Moon, and that

Warriston Johnstone and Parson Peters be the men, as a couple of

learned Rabbis in Lunatics." Heedless of such mockery, the

Harringtonians did not cease to put forth their own pamphlets with

all seriousness. _Valerius and Publicola, or the True Form of a

Popular Commonwealth extracted e puris naturalibus_ is the title

of a dialogue of Harrington's, of Nov. 17, expounding his principles

afresh.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 376 and 379-380; Ludlow, 751-752; Letters

of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 275, 293, 304; Thomason

Tract of date, entitled _Decrees and Orders, &c.;_ and

Thomason Catalogue.]

Two conclusions at least had been arrived at in the Sub-Committee and

Committee, and approved by the Wallingford-House Council of officers,

before the middle of November, when they were actually embodied in

the Treaty with Monk's Commissioners in London. One was as to the

mode of determining Parliamentary qualifications. That duty was to be

entrusted to a body of nineteen persons, ten of them named

(Whitlocke, Vane, Ludlow, St. John, Warriston, &c.), and the other

nine to be chosen by the Armies of England, Ireland, and Scotland,

three by each. A still more important conclusion was as to the body,

intermediate between the present powers and the People, to which the

whole Constitution should be submitted for revision and ratification

before being imposed upon the People. It was to be a great

Representative Council of the Army and Navy, to be composed of

delegates in the proportion of two commissioned officers from each

regiment in England, Scotland, or Ireland, chosen by the commissioned

officers of the regiments severally, together with ten naval officers

to be chosen by the officers of the Fleet collectively. To Ludlow,

approving only coldly of all that departed from his fixed idea of

sheer restitution of the Rump, this arrangement seemed, nevertheless,

a very fair one. It was settled, in fact, that the great

Representative Council should meet at Whitehall on the 6th of

December, by which time the complete draft of the Constitution would

be ready.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 374; Phillips. 671-672.]

The Army and Navy Council did meet on that day, and it is from their

proceedings that we learn best the nature of the Constitution

submitted to them. The meeting, indeed, was not the great one that

had been expected. The delegates from Ireland had not arrived; none

had come from Monk's army, though due intimation had been given to

him and he was reckoned bound by the Treaty; and, of course, in the

circumstances, delegates could not be spared from Lambert's. There

was, however, a sufficient gathering, and Ludlow attended, by

request, as one representative from Ireland. In a debate of five or

six days all the questions that had been discussed in the Committee

of Safety and its Sub-Committee were discussed over again, Ludlow and

Colonel Rich fighting for the restitution of the Rump even yet as the

one thing needful, others starting wild proposals even yet for a

restoration of the Protectorate, but Fleetwood, Desborough, and the

majority urging substantially the proposals that had come from the

Committee of Safety, or rather a reduction of those, by the omission

of such portions of them as were Vane's, to the moderate and

conservative core which might be regarded as Whitlocke's. As

Whitlocke himself was permitted to be present and advise in the

Council, he was able to contribute much to this result by his

lawyerly gravity and frequent mentions of the Great Seal. Altogether

the Constitution as it passed the Council may be considered as his.

And what was it? Nothing very alarming. A new Parliament, of a Single

House, to be elected by the people very much as by use and wont, but

in conformity with a well-considered scheme of "qualifications" for

keeping out the dangerous; a separation, however, of the Executive

from the Legislative, by the appointment, as heretofore, of a Supreme

Council of State; maintenance of the Established Church, and that by

Tithes till some other as ample provision should be devised;

Toleration of Dissent and of free expression of religious belief, but

still on this side of Quakerism and other anomalies, heresies, and

extravagancies: such, after all, was the homely outcome. If Vane and

the theorists of the Harringtonian Club were disappointed, Ludlow was

even in worse despair; and at the last moment he proposed an

extraordinary addition. If the late Rump was not to be restored, and

if they were to adopt a Constitution which threatened, as he feared,

to let in Charles, or to put all back under the power of the sword,

let them at least try to avert such consequences by defining a few

fundamentals which should be inviolable, and let them appoint, under

the name of _Conservators of Liberty_, twenty-one men to be

guardians of these fundamentals. He was humoured in this; and, three

fundamentals having been agreed on--to wit, (1) Commonwealth in

perpetuity, without King, Single Person, or House of Peers, (2)

Liberty of Conscience, (3) Unalterability of the Army arrangements

except by the Conservators--the Assembly proceeded to ballot on a

list of persons named by Ludlow as suitable for the office of

Conservators. All went as Ludlow wished for the first seven or eight

on the list,--dexterously arranged by him so because, being all men

of the Wallingford-House party except Vane and Salway, these two

could hardly in decency be blackballed. But then the order of voting

was broken; and, though Ludlow himself was elected, not another man

of the Parliamentarian party was let in. Actually, the Laird of

Warriston, who had declared publicly against Liberty of Conscience,

and Tichbourne, who had proposed to restore Richard to the

Protectorship, were preferred to such men as Hasilrig and Neville,

and made guardians of fundamentals in which they did not believe.

Ludlow then threw up the entire business in disgust, and resolved

that it was high time for him to be back in Ireland. Nevertheless,

his afterthought of the Fundamentals and their Conservators was

incorporated into Whitlocke's Constitution as it went back to the

Committee of Safety, with the ratification of the Council of Army and

Navy officers, This was on the 14th of December. The next day the

nature of the new Constitution was known to all who were interested,

and there was a proclamation for a Parliament to meet in February.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 377-380; Ludlow, 753-769; Letters of M.

de Bordeaux in Guizot, II. 306 and 315.]

Monk was now at Coldstream, on the Tweed, about nine miles from

Berwick. On the 13th of December he had taken leave, at Berwick, of a

deputation of Scottish nobles and gentlemen, headed by the Earls of

Glencairn, Tullibardine, Rothes, Roxburgh, and Wemyss, who had come

from Edinburgh with certain propositions and requests. As he was

going into England, leaving Scotland garrisoned but by a poor residue

of his soldiers, would he not permit the shires to raise small native

forces for police purposes, or would he not at least restore to the

Scottish nobility and gentry the privilege of wearing arms themselves

and having their servants armed? Farther, might he not, a little

while hence, sanction a general arming, so that Scotland might have

the pleasure of putting 6000 foot and 1500 horse at his disposal? The

minor requests were, within certain limits, granted easily; but

against the last Monk was still very wary. To have granted it would

have been to proclaim that he was taking the Scottish nation with him

in his enterprise, and so give indubitable foundation to those

rumours that "the King was at the bottom of it" which were flying

about already, and which it was his first care to contradict. There

must be no general arming of the Scots: he would march into England

with his own little army only! Still, however, he did not move from

Coldstream, but stuck there, exchanging messages with Lambert

respecting the renewal of the Treaty. It was now dead winter, and

the snow lay thick over the whole region between the two Generals.

Monk's personal accommodations at Coldstream were much worse than

Lambert's at Newcastle. He was quartered in a wretched cottage, with

two barns, where, on the first night of his arrival, he could find

nothing for supper, and had to munch more than his usual allowance of

raw tobacco instead. But he had the means of paying his men and

keeping them in good humour, while bad pay and the cold weather were

demoralising Lambert's.[1]

[Footnote 1: Skinner's Life of Monk, 161-168; Phillips, 674-675.]

For the restitution of the Rump Parliament, Monk's march into England

was to be quite unnecessary. His mere pertinacity in declaring

himself the champion of the Rump and making preparations for the

march had disintegrated all that seemingly coherent strength of the

Wallingford-House party throughout England and Ireland on which

Lambert could rely when he left London in the beginning of November.

All over England and Ireland, for six weeks now, people had been

talking of "Silent Old George," as Monk's own soldiers called him,

though he was but in his fifty-second year, and speculating on his

possible meaning, and on the chance that even Lambert might find him

more than a match. And such mere gossip and curiosity everywhere,

mingling with previous doubtings in some quarters, and with relics of

positive partisanship with the Rump in others, had gradually induced

a complete whirl of public feeling. By the middle of December, when

the Wallingford-House Government put forth their proclamation of a

new Parliament, this was so apparent that Whitlocke and his friends

at the centre might well doubt whether that Parliament would ever

meet. By that time, at all events, Lambert had begun to curse his own

folly in not having fallen upon Monk at first, and in having let

himself afterwards be deluded so long by the phantom of a renewed

treaty at Newcastle. For what had been the news, and continued to be

the news, post after post? Colonel Whetham, Governor of Portsmouth,

formerly Monk's associate in the Scottish Council, now in declared

cooperation with him, and holding the town for the Rump; Hasilrig,

Morley, and Walton, gone to Portsmouth to turn the revolt to

account; these and other members of the late Rump, such as Neville;

Scott, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, openly resuming their functions

and issuing documents in which they declared General Monk, "the

ablest and most experienced commander in these nations," to be

"warranted in his present actings" by their express commission;

risings or threatenings of risings in various parts of England,

whether Royalist or Republican not known, but equally troublesome to

the existing powers; Admiral Lawson and his Fleet actually in the

Thames with an avowal at length of allegiance to the late Parliament

only, and resisting all Vane's persuasions the other way; the Army in

Ireland, which had seemed so safe, now in a confused ferment, with

Sir Hardress Waller, Sir Charles Coote, Colonel Theophilus Jones, and

others, promoting a general demonstration in Monk's behalf! Lambert's

own Army was infected. That part of it which was called the Irish

Brigade, as consisting of regiments that had been brought from

Ireland at the time of Sir George Booth's insurrection, sympathised

with Monk openly; the rest were dubious or listless. In the rear of

Lambert in Yorkshire, though he can hardly yet have known the fact,

Lord Fairfax was organising a movement, really with Royalist aims,

but to take the form of a concerted combination with Monk as soon as

Monk should advance. But it was in London itself, close round the

powers at Whitehall, that their weakness had become most notorious

and alarming. For some time the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common

Council had been acting almost as an independent authority; the

citizens were resolute against the payment of taxes, and had formed

associations to resist their collection; all that was Cavalierish in

the city was astir, with all that was Republican, in daily displays

of contempt for the Wallingford-House junta and their soldiery.

Hewson's regiment, marching through the city, had been jeered at by

the apprentices and pelted with stones. In the centre of these London

tumults, Fleetwood, the Commander-in-chief, and the honorary head of

the Government, had shown himself incapable even of the local

management. Of Fleetwood, all in all, indeed, one knows not, by this

time, what to think. The combination of mild qualities which Milton

had eulogised in him in 1654 did not now suit. Ever since Richard's

fall, to which he had so largely contributed, Fleetwood had comported

himself as a dignified and sweet-mannered man, more acceptable in the

highest place than Lambert, but uneasy in his mind, and uncomfortable

in his relations to Lambert. He was a deeply religious man, which

Lambert was not; and it was observed that on late occasions in the

Council of Officers, when bad news made some sudden resolution

necessary, and Lambert would have been, ready with one, Fleetwood's

one resource had been "Gentlemen, let us pray." One thinks of

Fleetwood's brother-in-law, poor Henry Cromwell, and what he might

have been in Fleetwood's place. He, the man of real fitness, was in

seclusion in Cambridgeshire, rejected where he was most needed, and

indeed, though he did not yet fully know it, foreclosed already, at

the age of thirty-one, by his own honourable fidelity to his father's

ashes, from all farther career or employment in any English

world.[1]

[Footnote 1: Phillips, 674-676; Whitlocke, IV. 378-380; Skinner,

170-178; Thurloe, VII. 797-798 (Letter of Sir Anthony Ashley

Cooper, Scott, &c., to Fleetwood); Guizot, II. 54-57; Letters of M.

de Bordeaux in Appendix to Guizot, II. 307-318.]