PART II

_Commonwealth_--_Abolition of the monarchy, and of the house of

lords._--The death of Charles the First was pressed forward rather

through personal hatred and superstition, than out of any notion of

its necessity to secure a republican administration. That party was

still so weak, that the Commons came more slowly, and with more

difference of judgment than might be expected, to an absolute

renunciation of monarchy. They voted indeed that the people are, under

God, the original of all just power; and that whatever is enacted by

the Commons in parliament hath the force of law, although the consent

and concurrence of the king or House of Peers be not had thereto;

terms manifestly not exclusive of the nominal continuance of the two

latter. They altered the public style from the king's name to that of

the parliament, and gave other indications of their intentions; but

the vote for the abolition of monarchy did not pass till the seventh

of February, after a debate, according to Whitelock, but without a

division. None of that clamorous fanaticism showed itself, which,

within recent memory, produced, from a far more numerous assembly, an

instantaneous decision against monarchy. Wise men might easily

perceive that the regal power was only suspended through the force of

circumstances, not abrogated by any real change in public opinion.

The House of Lords, still less able than the Crown to withstand the

inroads of democracy, fell by a vote of the Commons at the same time.

It had continued during the whole progress of the war to keep up as

much dignity as the state of affairs would permit; tenacious of small

privileges, and offering much temporary opposition in higher matters,

though always receding in the end from a contention wherein it could

not be successful. The Commons, in return, gave them respectful

language, and discountenanced the rude innovators who talked against

the rights of the peerage. They voted, on occasion of some rumours,

that they held themselves obliged, by the fundamental laws of the

kingdom and their covenant, to preserve the peerage with the rights

and privileges belonging to the House of Peers, equally with their

own.[387] Yet this was with a secret reserve that the Lords should be

of the same mind as themselves. For, the upper house having resented

some words dropped from Sir John Evelyn at a conference concerning the

removal of the king to Warwick Castle, importing that the Commons

might be compelled to act without them, the Commons vindicating their

member as if his words did not bear that interpretation, yet added, in

the same breath, a plain hint that it was not beyond their own views

of what might be done; "hoping that their lordships did not intend by

their inference upon the words, even in the sense they took the same,

so to bind up this house to one way of proceeding as that in no case

whatsoever, though never so extraordinary, though never so much

importing the honour and interest of the kingdom, the Commons of

England might not do their duty, for the good and safety of the

kingdom, in such a way as they may, if they cannot do it in such a way

as they would and most desire."[388]

After the violent seclusion of the constitutional party from the House

of Commons, on the 6th of December 1648, very few, not generally more

than five, peers continued to meet. Their number was suddenly

increased to twelve on the 2nd of January; when the vote of the

Commons that it is high treason in the King of England for the time

being to levy war against parliament, and the ordinance constituting

the high court of justice, were sent up for their concurrence. These

were unanimously rejected with more spirit than some, at least, of

their number might be expected to display. Yet, as if apprehensive of

giving too much umbrage, they voted at their next meeting to prepare

an ordinance, making it treasonable for any future king of England to

levy war against the parliament--a measure quite as unconstitutional

as that they had rejected. They continued to linger on the verge of

annihilation during the month, making petty orders about writs of

error, from four to six being present: they even met on the 30th of

January. On the 1st of February, six peers forming the house, it was

moved, "that they would take into consideration the settlement of the

government of England and Ireland, in this present conjuncture of

things upon the death of the king;" and ordered that these Lords

following (naming those present and three more) be appointed to join

with a proportionable number of the House of Commons for that purpose.

Soon after, the speaker acquainted the house that he had that morning

received a letter from the Earl of Northumberland, with a paper

enclosed, of very great concernment; and for the present the house

ordered that it should be sealed up with the speaker's seal. This

probably related to the impending dissolution of their house; for they

found next day that their messengers sent to the Commons had not been

admitted. They persisted, however, in meeting till the 6th, when they

made a trifling order, and adjourned "till ten o'clock to-morrow."[389]

That morrow was the 25th of April 1660. For the Commons, having the

same day rejected, by a majority of forty-four to twenty-nine, a

motion that they would take the advice of the House of Lords in the

exercise of the legislative power, resolved that the House of Peers

was useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished.[390] It should

be noticed that there was no intention of taking away the dignity of

peerage; the Lords, throughout the whole duration of the commonwealth,

retained their titles, not only in common usage, but in all legal and

parliamentary documents. The Earl of Pembroke, basest among the base,

condescended to sit in the House of Commons as knight for the county

of Berks; and was received, notwithstanding his proverbial meanness

and stupidity, with such excessive honour as displayed the character

of those low-minded upstarts, who formed a sufficiently numerous

portion of the house to give their tone to its proceedings.[391]

Thus by military force, with the approbation of an inconceivably small

proportion of the people, the king was put to death; the ancient

fundamental laws were overthrown; and a mutilated House of Commons,

wherein very seldom more than seventy or eighty sat, was invested with

the supreme authority. So little countenance had these late

proceedings even from those who seemed of the ruling faction, that,

when the executive council of state, consisting of forty-one, had been

nominated, and a test was proposed to them, declaring their

approbation of all that had been done about the king and the kingly

office, and about the House of Lords, only nineteen would subscribe

it, though there were fourteen regicides on the list.[392] It was

agreed at length, that they should subscribe it only as to the future

proceedings of the Commons. With such dissatisfaction at

head-quarters, there was little to hope from the body of the

nation.[393] Hence, when an engagement was tendered to all civil

officers and beneficed clergy, containing only a promise to live

faithful to the commonwealth, as it was established without a king or

House of Lords (though the slightest test of allegiance that any

government could require), it was taken with infinite reluctance, and,

in fact, refused by very many; the presbyterian ministers especially

showing a determined averseness to the new republican organisation.[394]

This, however, was established (such is the dominion of the sword) far

beyond the control of any national sentiment. Thirty thousand veteran

soldiers guaranteed the mock parliament they had permitted to reign.

The sectaries, a numerous body, and still more active than numerous,

possessed, under the name of committees for various purposes appointed

by the House of Commons, the principal local authorities, and

restrained by a vigilant scrutiny the murmurs of a disaffected

majority. Love, an eminent presbyterian minister, lost his head for a

conspiracy, by the sentence of a high court of justice, a tribunal

that superseded trial by jury.[395] His death struck horror and

consternation into that arrogant priesthood, who had begun to fancy

themselves almost beyond the scope of criminal law. The cavaliers were

prostrate in the dust; and, anxious to retrieve something from the

wreck of their long sequestered estates, had generally little appetite

to embark afresh in a hopeless cause; besides that the mutual

animosities between their party and the presbyterians were still too

irreconcilable to admit of any sincere co-operation. Hence, neither

made any considerable effort in behalf of Charles on his march, or

rather flight, into England; a measure, indeed, too palpably

desperate for prudent men who had learned the strength of their

adversaries; and the great victory of Worcester consummated the

triumph of the infant commonwealth, or rather of its future master.

_Schemes of Cromwell._--A train of favouring events, more than any

deep-laid policy, had now brought sovereignty within the reach of

Cromwell. His first schemes of ambition may probably have extended no

farther than a title and estate, with a great civil and military

command in the king's name. Power had fallen into his hands because

they alone were fit to wield it; he was taught by every succeeding

event his own undeniable superiority over his contemporaries in

martial renown, in civil prudence, in decision of character, and in

the public esteem, which naturally attached to these qualities.

Perhaps it was not till after the battle of Worcester that he began to

fix his thoughts, if not on the dignity of royalty, yet on an

equivalent right of command. Two remarkable conversations, in which

Whitelock bore a part, seem to place beyond controversy the nature of

his designs. About the end of 1651, Whitelock himself, St. John,

Widdrington, Lenthall, Harrison, Desborough, Fleetwood, and Whalley,

met Cromwell, at his own request, to consider the settlement of the

nation. The four former were in favour of monarchy, Whitelock

inclining to Charles, Widdrington and others to the Duke of Glocester;

Desborough and Whalley were against a single person's government, and

Fleetwood uncertain. Cromwell, who had evidently procured this

conference in order to sift the inclinations of so many leading men,

and to give some intimation of his own, broke it up with remarking,

that, if it might be done with safety and preservation of their rights

as Englishmen and Christians, a settlement of somewhat with

monarchical power in it would be very effectual.[396] The observation

he here made of a disposition among the lawyers to elect the Duke of

Glocester, as being exempt by his youth from the prepossessions of the

two elder brothers, may, perhaps, have put Cromwell on releasing him

from confinement, and sending him to join his family beyond sea.[397]

Twelve months after this time, in a more confidential discourse with

Whitelock alone, the general took occasion to complain both of the

chief officers of the army and of the parliament; the first, as

inclined to factious murmurings, and the second, as ingrossing all

offices to themselves, divided into parties, delaying business, guilty

of gross injustice and partiality, and designing to perpetuate their

own authority. Whitelock, confessing part of this, urged that having

taken commissions from them as the supreme power, it would be

difficult to find means to restrain them. "What," said Cromwell, "if a

man should take upon him to be king?" "I think," answered Whitelock,

"that remedy would be worse than the disease." "Why," rejoined the

other, "do you think so?" He then pointed out that the statute of

Henry VII. gave a security to those who acted under a king, which no

other government could furnish; and that the reverence paid by the

people to that title would serve to curb the extravagances of those

now in power. Whitelock replied that their friends having engaged in a

persuasion, though erroneous, that their rights and liberties would be

better preserved under a commonwealth than a monarchy, this state of

the question would be wholly changed by Cromwell's assumption of the

title, and it would become a private controversy between his family

and that of the Stuarts. Finally, on the other's encouragement to

speak fully his thoughts, he told him "that no expedient seemed so

desirable as a private treaty with the king, in which he might not

only provide for the security of his friends, and the greatness of his

family, but set limits to monarchical power, keeping the command of

the militia in his own hands." Cromwell merely said, "that such a step

would require great consideration;" but broke off with marks of

displeasure, and consulted Whitelock much less for some years

afterwards.[398]

These projects of usurpation could not deceive the watchfulness of

those whom Cromwell pretended to serve. He had on several occasions

thrown off enough of his habitual dissimulation to show the

commonwealth's men that he was theirs only by accident, with none of

their fondness for republican polity.

_Unpopularity of the parliament._--The parliament in its present wreck

contained few leaders of superior ability; but a natural instinct

would dictate to such an assembly the distrust of a popular general,

even if there had been less to alarm them in his behaviour.[399] They

had no means, however, to withstand him. The creatures themselves of

military force, their pretensions to direct or control the army could

only move scorn or resentment. Their claim to a legal authority, and

to the name of representatives of a people who rejected and abhorred

them, was perfectly impudent. When the house was fullest, their

numbers did not much exceed one hundred; but the ordinary divisions,

even on subjects of the highest moment, show an attendance of but

fifty or sixty members. They had retained in their hands,

notwithstanding the appointment of a council of state, most of whom

were from their own body, a great part of the executive government,

especially the disposal of offices.[400] These they largely shared

among themselves or their dependents; and in many of their votes gave

occasion to such charges of injustice and partiality as, whether true

or false, will attach to a body of men so obviously self-interested.[401]

It seems to be a pretty general opinion that a popular assembly is

still more frequently influenced by corrupt and dishonest motives in

the distribution of favours, or the decision of private affairs, than

a ministry of state; whether it be that it is more probable that a man

of disinterestedness and integrity may in the course of events rise to

the conduct of government than that such virtues should belong to a

majority; or that the clandestine management of court corruption

renders it less scandalous and more easily varnished, than the

shamelessness of parliamentary iniquity.

The republican interest in the nation was almost wholly composed of

two parties, both off-shoots deriving strength from the great stock of

the army; the levellers, of whom Lilburne and Wildman are the most

known, and the anabaptists, fifth monarchy-men, and other fanatical

sectaries, headed by Harrison, Hewson, Overton, and a great number of

officers. Though the sectaries seemed to build their revolutionary

schemes more on their own religious views than the levellers, they

coincided in most of their objects and demands.[402] An equal

representation of the people in short parliaments, an extensive

alteration of the common law, the abolition of tithes, and indeed of

all regular stipends to the ministry, a full toleration of religious

worship, were reformations which they concurred in requiring, as the

only substantial fruits of their arduous struggle.[403] Some among the

wilder sects dreamed of overthrowing all civil institutions. These

factions were not without friends in the Commons. But the greater part

were neither inclined to gratify them, by taking away the provision

of the church, nor much less to divest themselves of their own

authority. They voted indeed that tithes should cease as soon as a

competent maintenance should be otherwise provided for the

clergy.[404] They appointed a commission to consider the reformation

of the law, in consequence of repeated petitions against many of its

inconveniences and abuses; who, though taxed of course with

dilatoriness by the ardent innovators, suggested many useful

improvements, several of which have been adopted in more regular

times, though with too cautious delay.[405] They proceeded rather

slowly and reluctantly to frame a scheme for future parliaments; and

resolved that they should consist of 400, to be chosen in due

proportion by the several counties, nearly upon the model suggested by

Lilburne, and afterwards carried into effect by Cromwell.[406] It was

with much delay and difficulty, amidst the loud murmurs of their

adherents, that they could be brought to any vote in regard to their

own dissolution. It passed on November 17, 1651, after some very close

divisions, that they should cease to exist as a parliament on November

3, 1654.[407] The republicans out of doors, who deemed annual, or at

least biennial, parliaments essential to their definition of liberty,

were indignant at so unreasonable a prolongation. Thus they forfeited

the good-will of the only party on whom they could have relied.

Cromwell dexterously aggravated their faults; he complained of their

delaying the settlement of the nation; he persuaded the fanatics of

his concurrence in their own schemes; the parliament, in turn,

conspired against his power, and, as the conspiracies of so many can

never be secret, let it be seen that one or other must be destroyed;

thus giving his forcible expulsion of them the pretext of

self-defence. They fell with no regret, or rather with much joy of the

nation, except a few who dreaded more from the alternative of military

usurpation or anarchy than from an assembly which still retained the

names and forms so precious in the eyes of those who adhere to the

ancient institutions of their country.[408]

_Little parliament._--It was now the deep policy of Cromwell to render

himself the sole refuge of those who valued the laws, or the regular

ecclesiastical ministry, or their own estates, all in peril from the

mad enthusiasts who were in hopes to prevail.[409] These he had

admitted into that motley convention of one hundred and twenty

persons, sometimes called Barebone's parliament, but more commonly the

little parliament, on whom his council of officers pretended to

devolve the government, mingling them with a sufficient proportion of

a superior class whom he could direct.[410] This assembly took care

to avoid the censure which their predecessors had incurred, by passing

a good many bills, and applying themselves with a vigorous hand to the

reformation of what their party deemed the most essential grievances,

those of the law and of the church. They voted the abolition of the

Court of Chancery, a measure provoked by its insufferable delay, its

engrossing of almost all suits, and the uncertainty of its decisions.

They appointed a committee to consider of a new body of the law,

without naming any lawyer upon it.[411] They nominated a set of

commissioners to preside in courts of justice, among whom they with

difficulty admitted two of that profession;[412] they irritated the

clergy by enacting that marriages should be solemnised before justices

of the peace;[413] they alarmed them still more, by manifesting a

determination to take away their tithes, without security for an

equivalent maintenance.[414] Thus having united against itself these

two powerful bodies, whom neither kings nor parliaments in England

have in general offended with impunity, this little synod of

legislators was ripe for destruction. Their last vote was to negative

a report of their own committee, recommending that such as should be

approved as preachers of the gospel, should enjoy the maintenance

already settled by law; and that the payment of tithes, as a just

property, should be enforced by the magistrates. The house having, by

the majority of two, disagreed with this report,[415] the speaker, two

days after, having secured a majority of those present, proposed the

surrender of their power into the hands of Cromwell, who put an end to

the opposition of the rest, by turning them out of doors.

It can admit of no doubt that the despotism of a wise man is more

tolerable than that of political or religious fanatics; and it rarely

happens that there is any better remedy in revolutions which have

given the latter an ascendant. Cromwell's assumption, therefore, of

the title of Protector was a necessary and wholesome usurpation,

however he may have caused the necessity; it secured the nation from

the mischievous lunacy of the anabaptists, and from the more

cool-blooded tyranny of that little oligarchy which arrogated to

itself the name of commonwealth's men. Though a gross and glaring

evidence of the omnipotence of the army, the instrument under which he

took his title, accorded to him no unnecessary executive authority.

The sovereignty still resided in the parliament; he had no negative

voice on their laws. Until the meeting of the next parliament, a power

was given him of making temporary ordinances; but this was not, as

Hume, on the authority of Clarendon and Warwick, has supposed, and as

his conduct, if that were any proof of the law, might lead us to

infer, designed to exist in future intervals of the legislature.[416]

It would be scarcely worth while, however, to pay much attention to a

form of government which was so little regarded, except as it marks

the jealousy of royal power, which those most attached to Cromwell,

and least capable of any proper notions of liberty, continued to

entertain.

In the ascent of this bold usurper to greatness, he had successively

employed and thrown away several of the powerful factions who

distracted the nation. He had encouraged the levellers and persecuted

them; he had flattered the long parliament and betrayed it; he had

made use of the sectaries to crush the commonwealth; he had spurned

the sectaries in his last advance to power. These, with the royalists

and the presbyterians, forming, in effect, the whole people, though

too disunited for such a coalition as must have overthrown him, were

the perpetual, irreconcilable enemies of his administration. Master of

his army, which he well knew how to manage, surrounded by a few deep

and experienced counsellors, furnished by his spies with the

completest intelligence of all designs against him, he had no great

cause of alarm from open resistance.

_Parliament called by Cromwell._--But he was bound by the instrument

of government to call a parliament; and in any parliament his

adversaries must be formidable. He adopted in both those which he

summoned, the reformed model already determined; limiting the number

of representatives to 400, to be chosen partly in the counties,

according to their wealth or supposed population, by electors

possessing either freeholds, or any real or movable property to the

value of £200; partly by the more considerable boroughs, in whose

various rights of election no change appears to have been made.[417]

This alteration, conformable to the equalising principles of the age,

did not produce so considerable a difference in the persons returned

as it perhaps might at present.[418] The court-party, as those

subservient to him were called, were powerful through the subjection

of the electors to the army. But they were not able to exclude the

presbyterian and republican interests; the latter headed by Bradshaw,

Haslerig, and Scott, eager to thwart the power which they were

compelled to obey.[419] Hence they began by taking into consideration

the whole instrument of government; and even resolved themselves into

a committee to debate its leading article, the protector's authority.

Cromwell, his supporters having lost this question on a division of

141 to 136, thought it time to interfere. He gave them to understand

that the government by a single person and a parliament, was a

fundamental principle, not subject to their discussion; and obliged

every member to a recognition of it, solemnly promising neither to

attempt nor to concur in any alteration of that article.[420] The

Commons voted, however, that this recognition should not extend to the

entire instrument, consisting of forty-two articles; and went on to

discuss them with such heat and prolixity, that after five months, the

limited term of their session, the protector, having obtained the

ratification of his new scheme neither so fully nor so willingly as he

desired, particularly having been disappointed by the great majority

of 200 to 60, which voted the protectorate to be elective, not

hereditary, dissolved the parliament with no small marks of

dissatisfaction.[421]

_Intrigues of the king and his party._--The banished king, meanwhile,

began to recover a little of that political importance which the

battle of Worcester had seemed almost to extinguish. So ill supported

by his English adherents on that occasion, so incapable with a better

army than he had any prospect of ever raising again, to make a stand

against the genius and fortune of the usurper, it was vain to expect

that he could be restored by any domestic insurrection, until the

disunion of the prevailing factions should offer some more favourable

opportunity. But this was too distant a prospect for his court of

starving followers. He had from the beginning looked around for

foreign assistance. But France was distracted by her own troubles;

Spain deemed it better policy to cultivate the new commonwealth; and

even Holland, though engaged in a dangerous war with England, did not

think it worth while to accept his offer of joining her fleet, in

order to try his influence with the English seamen.[422] Totally

unscrupulous as to the means by which he might reign, even at the

moment that he was treating to become the covenanted king of Scotland,

with every solemn renunciation of popery, Charles had recourse to a

very delicate negotiation, which deserves remark, as having led, after

a long course of time, but by gradual steps, to the final downfall of

his family. With the advice of Ormond, and with the concurrence of

Hyde, he attempted to interest the pope (Innocent X.) on his side, as

the most powerful intercessor with the catholic princes of

Europe.[423] For this purpose it was necessary to promise toleration

at least to the catholics. The king's ambassadors to Spain in 1650,

Cottington and Hyde, and other agents despatched to Rome at the same

time, were empowered to offer an entire repeal of the penal laws.[424]

The king himself, some time afterwards, wrote a letter to the pope,

wherein he repeated this assurance. That court, however, well aware of

the hereditary duplicity of the Stuarts, received his overtures with

haughty contempt. The pope returned no answer to the king's letter;

but one was received after many months from the general of the

jesuits, requiring that Charles should declare himself a catholic,

since the goods of the church could not be lavished for the support of

an heretical prince.[425] Even after this insolent refusal, the

wretched exiles still clung, at times, to the vain hope of succour,

which as protestants and Englishmen they could not honourably

demand.[426] But many of them remarked too clearly the conditions on

which assistance might be obtained; the court of Charles, openly or in

secret, began to pass over to the catholic church; and the contagion

soon spread to the highest places.

In the year 1654, the royalist intrigues in England began to grow more

active and formidable through the accession of many discontented

republicans.[427] Though there could be no coalition, properly

speaking, between such irreconcilable factions, they came into a sort

of tacit agreement, as is not unusual, to act in concert for the only

purpose they entertained alike, the destruction of their common enemy.

Major Wildman, a name not very familiar to the general reader, but

which occurs perpetually, for almost half a century, when we look into

more secret history, one of those dark and restless spirits who

delight in the deep game of conspiracy against every government, seems

to have been the first mover of this unnatural combination. He had

been early engaged in the schemes of the levellers, and was exposed to

the jealous observation of the ruling powers. It appears most probable

that his views were to establish a commonwealth, and to make the

royalists his dupes. In his correspondence however with Brussels, he

engaged to restore the king. Both parties were to rise in arms against

the new tyranny; and the nation's temper was tried by clandestine

intrigues in almost every county.[428] Greater reliance however was

placed on the project of assassinating Cromwell. Neither party were by

any means scrupulous on this score: if we have not positive evidence

of Charles's concurrence in this scheme, it would be preposterous to

suppose that he would have been withheld by any moral hesitation. It

is frequently mentioned without any disapprobation by Clarendon in his

private letters;[429] and, as the royalists certainly justified the

murders of Ascham and Dorislaus, they could not in common sense or

consistency have scrupled one so incomparably more capable of

defence.[430] A Mr. Gerard suffered death for one of these plots to

kill Cromwell; justly sentenced, though by an illegal tribunal.[431]

_Insurrectionary movements in 1655._--In the year 1655, Penruddock, a

Wiltshire gentleman, with a very trifling force, entered Salisbury at

the time of the assizes; and, declaring for the king, seized the judge

and the sheriff.[432] This little rebellion, meeting with no

resistance from the people, but a supineness equally fatal, was soon

quelled. It roused Cromwell to secure himself by an unprecedented

exercise of power. In possession of all the secrets of his enemies, he

knew that want of concert or courage had alone prevented a general

rising, towards which indeed there had been some movements in the

midland counties.[433] He was aware of his own unpopularity, and the

national bias towards the exiled king. Juries did not willingly

convict the sharers in Penruddock's rebellion.[434] To govern

according to law may sometimes be an usurper's wish, but can seldom be

in his power. The protector abandoned all thought of it. Dividing the

kingdom into districts, he placed at the head of each a major-general

as a sort of military magistrate, responsible for the subjection of

his prefecture. These were eleven in number, men bitterly hostile to

the royalist party, and insolent towards all civil authority.[435]

They were employed to secure the payment of a tax of 10 per cent.,

imposed by Cromwell's arbitrary will on those who had ever sided with

the king during the late war, where their estates exceeded £100 per

annum. The major-generals, in their correspondence printed among

Thurloe's papers, display a rapacity and oppression beyond their

master's. They complain that the number of those exempted is too

great; they press for harsher measures; they incline to the

unfavourable construction in every doubtful case; they dwell on the

growth of malignancy and the general disaffection.[436] It was not

indeed likely to be mitigated by this unparalleled tyranny. All

illusion was now gone as to the pretended benefits of the civil war.

It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all the illegal

practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles his life and

crown, appeared as dust in the balance. For what was ship-money, a

general burthen, by the side of the present decimation of a single

class, whose offence had long been expiated by a composition and

defaced by an act of indemnity? or were the excessive punishments of

the star-chamber so odious as the capital executions inflicted without

trial by peers, whenever it suited the usurper to erect his high court

of justice? A sense of present evils not only excited a burning desire

to live again under the ancient monarchy, but obliterated, especially

in the new generation, that had no distinct remembrance of them, the

apprehension of its former abuses.[437]

_Cromwell's arbitrary government._--If this decimation of the

royalists could pass for an act of severity towards a proscribed

faction, in which the rest of the nation might fancy themselves not

interested, Cromwell did not fail to show that he designed to exert an

equally despotic command over every man's property. With the advice of

his council, he had imposed, or, as I conceive (for it is not clearly

explained), continued, a duty on merchandise beyond the time limited

by law. A Mr. George Cony having refused to pay this tax, it was

enforced from him, on which he sued the collector. Cromwell sent his

counsel, Maynard, Twisden, and Wyndham, to the Tower, who soon

petitioned for liberty, and abandoned their client. Rolle, the chief

justice, when the cause came on, dared not give judgment against the

protector; yet, not caring to decide in his favour, postponed the case

till the next term, and meanwhile retired from the bench. Glyn, who

succeeded him upon it, took care to have this business accommodated

with Cony, who, at some loss of public reputation, withdrew his suit.

Sir Peter Wentworth, having brought a similar action, was summoned

before the council, and asked if he would give it up. "If you command

me," he replied to Cromwell, "I must submit;" which the protector did,

and the action was withdrawn.[438]

Though it cannot be said that such an interference with the privileges

of advocates or the integrity of judges was without precedents in the

times of the Stuarts, yet it had never been done in so public or

shameless a manner. Several other instances wherein the usurper

diverted justice from its course, or violated the known securities of

Englishmen, will be found in most general histories; not to dwell on

that most flagrant of all, the erection of his high court of justice,

by which Gerard and Vowel in 1654, Slingsby and Hewit in 1658, were

brought to the scaffold.[439] I cannot therefore agree in the praises

which have been showered upon Cromwell for the just administration of

the laws under his dominion. That, between party and party, the

ordinary civil rights of men were fairly dealt with, is no

extraordinary praise; and it may be admitted that he filled the

benches of justice with able lawyers, though not so considerable as

those of the reign of Charles the Second; but it is manifest that, so

far as his own authority was concerned, no hereditary despot, proud in

the crimes of a hundred ancestors, could more have spurned at every

limitation than this soldier of a commonwealth.[440]

_Cromwell summons another parliament._--Amidst so general a hatred,

trusting to the effect of an equally general terror, the protector

ventured to summon a parliament in 1656. Besides the common

necessities for money, he had doubtless in his head that remarkable

scheme which was developed during its session.[441] Even the despotic

influence of his major-generals, and the political annihilation of the

most considerable body of the gentry, then labouring under the

imputation of delinquency for their attachment to the late king, did

not enable him to obtain a secure majority in the assembly; and he was

driven to the audacious measure of excluding above ninety members,

duly returned by their constituents, from taking their seats. Their

colleagues wanted courage to resist this violation of all privilege;

and, after referring them to the council for approbation, resolved to

proceed with public business. The excluded members, consisting partly

of the republican, partly of the presbyterian factions, published a

remonstrance in a very high strain, but obtained no redress.[442]

_Cromwell designs to take the crown._--Cromwell, like so many other

usurpers, felt his position too precarious, or his vanity ungratified,

without the name which mankind have agreed to worship. He had, as

evidently appears from the conversations recorded by Whitelock, long

since aspired to this titular, as well as to the real, pre-eminence;

and the banished king's friends had contemplated the probability of

his obtaining it with dismay.[443] Affectionate towards his family, he

wished to assure the stability of his son's succession, and perhaps to

please the vanity of his daughters. It was indeed a very reasonable

object with one who had already advanced so far. His assumption of the

crown was desirable to many different classes; to the lawyers, who,

besides their regard for the established constitution, knew that an

ancient statute would protect those who served a _de facto_ king in

case of a restoration of the exiled family; to the nobility, who

perceived that their legislative right must immediately revive; to the

clergy, who judged the regular ministry more likely to be secure under

a monarchy; to the people, who hoped for any settlement that would put

an end to perpetual changes; to all of every rank and profession who

dreaded the continuance of military despotism, and demanded only the

just rights and privileges of their country. A king of England could

succeed only to a bounded prerogative, and must govern by the known

laws; a protector, as the nation had well felt, with less nominal

authority, had all the sword could confer. And, though there might be

little chance that Oliver would abate one jot of a despotism for which

not the times of the Tudors could furnish a precedent, yet his life

was far worn, and under a successor it was to be expected that future

parliaments might assert again all those liberties for which they had

contended against Charles.[444] A few of the royalists might perhaps

fancy that the restoration of the royal title would lead to that of

the lawful heir; but a greater number were content to abandon a nearly

desperate cause, if they could but see the more valuable object of

their concern, the form itself of polity, re-established.[445] There

can be, as it appears to me, little room for doubt that if Cromwell

had overcome the resistance of his generals, he would have transmitted

the sceptre to his descendants with the acquiescence and tacit

approbation of the kingdom. Had we been living ever since under the

rule of his dynasty, what tone would our historians have taken as to

his character and that of the house of Stuart?

The scheme however of founding a new royal line failed of

accomplishment, as is well known, through his own caution, which

deterred him from encountering the decided opposition of his army.

Some of his contemporaries seem to have deemed this abandonment, or

more properly suspension, of so splendid a design rather derogatory to

his firmness.[446] But few men were better judges than Cromwell of

what might be achieved by daring. It is certainly not impossible that,

by arresting Lambert, Whalley, and some other generals, he might have

crushed for the moment any tendency to open resistance. But the

experiment would have been infinitely hazardous. He had gone too far

in the path of violence to recover the high road of law by any short

cut. King or protector, he must have intimidated every parliament, or

sunk under its encroachments. A new-modelled army might have served

his turn; but there would have been great difficulties in its

formation. It had from the beginning been the misfortune of his

government that it rested on a basis too narrow for its safety. For

two years he had reigned with no support but the independent sectaries

and the army. The army or its commanders becoming odious to the

people, he had sacrificed them to the hope of popularity, by

abolishing the civil prefectures of the major-generals,[447] and

permitting a bill for again decimating the royalists to be thrown out

of the house.[448] Their disgust and resentment, excited by an artful

intriguer, who aspired at least to the succession of the

protectorship, found scope in the new project of monarchy, naturally

obnoxious to the prejudices of true fanatics, and who still fancied

themselves to have contended for a republican liberty. We find that

even Fleetwood, allied by marriage to Cromwell, and not involved in

the discontent of the major-generals, in all the sincerity of his

clouded understanding, revolted from the invidious title, and would

have retired from service had it been assumed. There seems therefore

reason to think that Cromwell's refusal of the crown was an inevitable

mortification. But he undoubtedly did not lose sight of the object for

the short remainder of his life.[449]

The fundamental charter of the English commonwealth under the

protectorship of Cromwell, had been the instrument of government,

drawn up by the council of officers in December 1653, and approved

with modifications by the parliament of the next year. It was now

changed to the petition and advice, tendered to him by the present

parliament in May 1657, which made very essential innovations in the

frame of polity. Though he bore, as formerly, the name of lord

protector, we may say, speaking according to theoretical

classification, and without reference to his actual exercise of power,

which was nearly the same, that the English government in the first

period should be ranged in the order of republics, though with a chief

magistrate at its head; but that from 1657 it became substantially a

monarchy, and ought to be placed in that class, notwithstanding the

unimportant difference in the style of its sovereign. The petition and

advice had been compiled with a constant respect to that article,

which conferred the royal dignity on the protector;[450] and when this

was withdrawn at his request, the rest of the instrument was

preserved with all its implied attributions of sovereignty. The style

is that of subjects addressing a monarch; the powers it bestows, the

privileges it claims, are supposed, according to the expressions

employed, the one to be already his own, the other to emanate from his

will. The necessity of his consent to laws, though nowhere mentioned,

seems to have been taken for granted. An unlimited power of appointing

a successor, unknown even to constitutional kingdoms, was vested in

the protector. He was inaugurated with solemnities applicable to

monarchs; and what of itself is a sufficient test of the monarchical

and republican species of government, an oath of allegiance was taken

by every member of parliament to the protector singly, without any

mention of the commonwealth.[451] It is surely, therefore, no paradox

to assert that Oliver Cromwell was _de facto_ sovereign of England,

during the interval from June 1657, to his death in September 1658.

The zealous opponents of royalty could not be insensible that they had

seen it revive in everything except a title, which was not likely to

remain long behind.[452] It was too late however to oppose the first

magistrate's personal authority. But there remained one important

point of contention, which the new constitution had not fully settled.

It was therein provided that the parliament should consist of two

houses; namely, the Commons, and what they always termed, with an

awkward generality, the other house. This was to consist of not more

than seventy, nor less than forty persons, to be nominated by the

protector, and, as it stood at first, to be approved by the Commons.

But before the close of the session, the court party prevailed so far

as to procure the repeal of this last condition;[453] and Cromwell

accordingly issued writs of summons to persons of various parties, a

few of the ancient peers, a few of his adversaries, whom he hoped to

gain over, or at least to exclude from the Commons, and of course a

majority of his steady adherents. To all these he gave the title of

Lords; and in the next session their assembly denominated itself the

Lords' house.[454] This measure encountered considerable difficulty.

The republican party, almost as much attached to that vote which had

declared the House of Lords useless, as to that which had abolished

the monarchy, and well aware of the intimate connection between the

two, resisted the assumption of this aristocratic title, instead of

that of the other house, which the petition and advice had sanctioned.

The real peers feared to compromise their hereditary right by sitting

in an assembly where the tenure was only during life; and disdained

some of their colleagues, such as Pride and Hewson, low-born and

insolent men, whom Cromwell had rather injudiciously bribed with this

new nobility; though, with these few exceptions, his House of Lords

was respectably composed. Hence, in the short session of January 1658,

wherein the late excluded members were permitted to take their seats,

so many difficulties were made about acknowledging the Lords' house by

that denomination, that the protector hastily and angrily dissolved

the parliament.[455]

It is a singular part of Cromwell's system of policy, that he would

neither reign with parliaments nor without them; impatient of an

opposition which he was sure to experience, he still never seems to

have meditated the attainment of a naked and avowed despotism. This

was probably due to his observation of the ruinous consequences that

Charles had brought on himself by that course, and his knowledge of

the temper of the English, never content without the exterior forms of

liberty, as well as to the suggestions of counsellors who were not

destitute of concern for the laws. He had also his great design yet to

accomplish, which could only be safely done under the sanction of a

parliament. A very short time, accordingly, before his death, we find

that he had not only resolved to meet once more the representatives of

the nation, but was tampering with several of the leading officers to

obtain their consent to an hereditary succession. The majority however

of a council of nine, to whom he referred this suggestion, would only

consent that the protector for the time being should have the power of

nominating his successor; a vain attempt to escape from that regal

form of government which they had been taught to abhor.[456] But a

sudden illness, of a nature seldom fatal except to a constitution

already shattered by fatigue and anxiety, rendered abortive all these

projects of Cromwell's ambition.

_Cromwell's death, and character._--He left a fame behind him

proportioned to his extraordinary fortunes and to the great qualities

which sustained them; still more perhaps the admiration of strangers

than of his country, because that sentiment was less alloyed by

hatred, which seeks to extenuate the glory that irritates it. The

nation itself forgave much to one who had brought back the renown of

her ancient story, the traditions of Elizabeth's age, after the

ignominious reigns of her successors. This contrast with James and

Charles in their foreign policy gave additional lustre to the era of

the protectorate. There could not but be a sense of national pride to

see an Englishman, but yesterday raised above the many, without one

drop of blood in his veins which the princes of the earth could

challenge as their own, receive the homage of those who acknowledged

no right to power, and hardly any title to respect, except that of

prescription. The sluggish pride of the court of Spain, the

mean-spirited cunning of Mazarin, the irregular imagination of

Christina, sought with emulous ardour the friendship of our

usurper.[457] He had the advantage of reaping the harvest which he had

not sown, by an honourable treaty with Holland, the fruit of

victories achieved under the parliament. But he still employed the

great energies of Blake in the service for which he was so eminently

fitted; and it is just to say that the maritime glory of England may

first be traced from the era of the commonwealth in a track of

continuous light. The oppressed protestants in catholic kingdoms,

disgusted at the lukewarmness and half-apostasy of the Stuarts, looked

up to him as their patron and mediator.[458] Courted by the two rival

monarchies of Europe, he seemed to threaten both with his hostility;

and when he declared against Spain, and attacked her West India

possessions with little pretence certainly of justice, but not by any

means, as I conceive, with the impolicy sometimes charged against him,

so auspicious was his star that the very failure and disappointment of

that expedition obtained a more advantageous possession for England

than all the triumphs of her former kings.

Notwithstanding this external splendour, which has deceived some of

our own, and most foreign writers, it is evident that the submission

of the people to Cromwell was far from peaceable or voluntary. His

strong and skilful grasp kept down a nation of enemies that must

naturally, to judge from their numbers and inveteracy, have

overwhelmed him. It required a dexterous management to play with the

army, and without the army he could not have existed as sovereign for

a day. Yet it seems improbable that, had Cromwell lived, any

insurrection or conspiracy, setting aside assassination, could have

overthrown a possession so fenced by systematic vigilance, by

experienced caution, by the respect and terror that belonged to his

name. The royalist and republican intrigues had gone on for several

years without intermission; but every part of their designs was open

to him; and it appears that there was not courage or rather temerity

sufficient to make any open demonstration of so prevalent a

disaffection.[459]

The most superficial observers cannot have overlooked the general

resemblances in the fortunes and character of Cromwell, and of him

who, more recently and upon an ampler theatre, has struck nations with

wonder and awe. But the parallel may be traced more closely than

perhaps has hitherto been remarked. Both raised to power by the only

merit which a revolution leaves uncontroverted and untarnished, that

of military achievements, in that reflux of public sentiment, when the

fervid enthusiasm of democracy gives place to disgust at its excesses

and a desire of firm government. The means of greatness the same to

both, the extinction of a representative assembly, once national, but

already mutilated by violence, and sunk by its submission to that

illegal force into general contempt. In military science or the renown

of their exploits, we cannot certainly rank Cromwell by the side of

him, for whose genius and ambition all Europe seemed the appointed

quarry; but it may be said that the former's exploits were as much

above the level of his contemporaries, and more the fruits of an

original uneducated capacity. In civil government, there can be no

adequate parallel between one who had sucked only the dregs of a

besotted fanaticism, and one to whom the stores of reason and

philosophy were open. But it must here be added that Cromwell, far

unlike his antitype, never showed any signs of a legislative mind, or

any desire to fix his renown on that noblest basis, the amelioration

of social institutions. Both were eminent masters of human nature, and

played with inferior capacities in all the security of powerful minds.

Though both, coming at the conclusion of a struggle for liberty,

trampled upon her claims, and sometimes spoke disdainfully of her

name, each knew how to associate the interests of those who had

contended for her with his own ascendancy, and made himself the

representative of a victorious revolution. Those who had too much

philosophy or zeal for freedom to give way to popular admiration for

these illustrious usurpers, were yet amused with the adulation that

lawful princes showered on them, more gratuitously in one instance,

with servile terror in the other. Both too repaid in some measure this

homage of the pretended great by turning their ambition towards those

honours and titles which they knew to be so little connected with

high desert. A fallen race of monarchs, which had made way for the

greatness of each, cherished hopes of restoration by their power till

each, by an inexpiable act of blood, manifested his determination to

make no compromise with that line. Both possessed a certain coarse

good nature and affability that covered the want of conscience,

honour, and humanity; quick in passion, but not vindictive, and averse

to unnecessary crimes. Their fortunes in the conclusion of life were

indeed very different; one forfeited the affections of his people,

which the other, in the character at least of their master, had never

possessed; one furnished a moral to Europe by the continuance of his

success, the other by the prodigiousness of his fall. A fresh

resemblance arose afterwards, when the restoration of those royal

families, whom their ascendant had kept under, revived ancient

animosities, and excited new ones; those who from love of democratical

liberty had borne the most deadly hatred to the apostates who had

betrayed it, recovering some affection to their memory, out of

aversion to a common enemy. Our English republicans have, with some

exceptions, displayed a sympathy for the name of Cromwell; and I need

not observe how remarkably this holds good in the case of his mighty

parallel.[460]

_Cromwell's son succeeds him_--The death of a great man, even in the

most regular course of affairs, seems always to create a sort of pause

in the movement of society; it is always a problem to be solved only

by experiment, whether the mechanism of government may not be

disordered by the shock, or have been deprived of some of its moving

powers. But what change could be so great as that from Oliver Cromwell

to his son! from one beneath the terror of whose name a nation had

cowered and foreign princes grown pale, one trained in twenty eventful

years of revolution, the first of his age in the field or in council,

to a young man fresh from a country life, uneducated, unused to

business, as little a statesman as a soldier, and endowed by nature

with capacities by no means above the common. It seems to have been a

mistake in Oliver that with the projects he had long formed in his

eldest son's favour, he should have taken so little pains to fashion

his mind and manners for the exercise of sovereign power, while he had

placed the second in a very eminent and arduous station; or that, if

he despaired of Richard's capacity, he should have trusted him to

encounter those perils of disaffection and conspiracy which it had

required all his own vigilance to avert. But, whatever might be his

plans, the sudden illness which carried him from the world left no

time for completing them. The Petition and Advice had simply empowered

him to appoint a successor, without prescribing the mode. It appeared

consonant to law and reason that so important a trust should be

executed in a notorious manner, and by a written instrument; or, if a

verbal nomination might seem sufficient, it was at least to be

expected that this should be authenticated by solemn and indisputable

testimony. No proof however was ever given of Richard's appointment by

his father, except a recital in the proclamation of the privy council,

which, whether well founded or otherwise, did not carry conviction to

the minds of the people; and this, even if we call it but an

informality, aggravated the numerous legal and natural deficiencies of

his title to the government.[461]

This very difference however in the personal qualifications of the

father and the son, procured the latter some friends whom the former

had never been able to gain. Many of the presbyterian party began to

see the finger of God, as they called it, in his peaceable accession,

and to think they owed subjection to one who came in neither by

regicide, nor hypocrisy, nor violence.[462] Some cool-headed and

sincere friends of liberty entertained similar opinions. Pierrepont,

one of the wisest men in England, who had stood aloof from the

protector's government till the scheme of restoring monarchy came into

discussion, had great hopes, as a writer of high authority informs us,

of settling the nation in the enjoyment of its liberties under the

young man; who was "so flexible," says that writer, "to good counsels,

that there was nothing desirable in a prince which might not have been

hoped in him, but a great spirit and a just title; the first of which

sometimes doth more hurt than good in a sovereign; the latter would

have been supplied by the people's deserved approbation." Pierrepont

believed that the restoration of the ancient family could not be

effected without the ruin of the people's liberty, and of all who had

been its champions; so that no royalist, he thought, who had any

regard to his country, would attempt it: while this establishment of

monarchy in Richard's person might reconcile that party, and compose

all differences among men of weight and of zeal for the public

good.[463] He acted accordingly on those principles; and became, as

well as his friend St. John, who had been discountenanced by Oliver, a

steady supporter of the young protector's administration. These two,

with Thurloe, Whitelock, Lord Broghill, and a very few more, formed a

small phalanx of experienced counsellors around his unstable throne.

And I must confess that their course of policy in sustaining Richard's

government appears to me the most judicious that, in the actual

circumstances, could have been adopted. Pregnant as the restoration of

the exiled family was with incalculable dangers, the English monarchy

would have revived with less lustre in the eyes of the vulgar, but

with more security for peace and freedom, in the line of Cromwell.

Time would have worn away the stains of ignoble birth and criminal

usurpation; and the young man, whose misfortune has subjected him to

rather an exaggerated charge of gross incapacity, would probably have

reigned as well as most of those who are born in the purple.[464]

But this termination was defeated by the combination of some who knew

not what they wished, and of some who wished what they could never

attain. The general officers who had been well content to make

Cromwell the first of themselves, or greater than themselves by their

own creation, had never forgiven his manifest design to reign over

them as one of a superior order, and owing nothing to their pleasure.

They had begun to cabal during his last illness. Though they did not

oppose Richard's succession, they continued to hold meetings, not

quite public, but exciting intense alarm in his council. As if

disdaining the command of a clownish boy, they proposed that the

station of lord general should be separated from that of protector,

with the power over all commissions in the army, and conferred on

Fleetwood; who, though his brother-in-law, was a certain instrument in

their hands. The vain ambitious Lambert, aspiring, on the credit of

some military reputation, to wield the sceptre of Cromwell, influenced

this junto; while the commonwealth's party, some of whom were, or had

been, in the army, drew over several of these ignorant and fanatical

soldiers. Thurloe describes the posture of affairs in September and

October, while all Europe was admiring the peaceable transmission of

Oliver's power, as most alarming; and it may almost be said that

Richard had already fallen when he was proclaimed the lord protector

of England.[465]

_A parliament called._--It was necessary to summon a parliament on the

usual score of obtaining money. Lord Broghill had advised this measure

immediately on Oliver's death,[466] and perhaps the delay might be

rather prejudicial to the new establishment. But some of the council

feared a parliament almost as much as they did the army. They called

one, however, to meet Jan. 27, 1659, issuing writs in the ordinary

manner to all boroughs which had been accustomed to send members, and

consequently abandoning the reformed model of Cromwell. This Ludlow

attributes to their expectation of greater influence among the small

boroughs; but it may possibly be ascribed still more to a desire of

returning by little and little to the ancient constitution, by

eradicating the revolutionary innovations. The new parliament

consisted of courtiers, as the Cromwell party were always denominated,

of presbyterians, among whom some of cavalier principles crept in, and

of republicans; the two latter nearly balancing, with their united

weight, the ministerial majority.[467] They began with an oath of

allegiance to the protector, as presented by the late parliament,

which, as usual in such cases, his enemies generally took without

scruple.[468] But upon a bill being offered for the recognition of

Richard as the undoubted lord protector and chief magistrate of the

commonwealth, they made a stand against the word recognise, which was

carried with difficulty, and caused him the mortification of throwing

out the epithet undoubted.[469] They subsequently discussed his

negative voice in passing bills, which had been purposely slurred over

in the Petition and Advice; but now everything was disputed. The

thorny question as to the powers and privileges of the other house

came next into debate. It was carried by 177 to 113, to transact

business with them. To this resolution an explanation was added, that

it was not thereby intended to exclude such peers as had been faithful

to the parliament, from their privilege of being duly summoned to be

members of that house. The court supporting this absurd proviso, which

confounded the ancient and modern systems of government, carried it by

the small majority of 195 to 188.[470] They were stronger in rejecting

an important motion, to make the approbation of the Commons a

preliminary to their transacting business with the persons now sitting

in the other house as a house of parliament, by 183 voices to 146. But

the opposition succeeded in inserting the words "during the present

parliament," which left the matter still unsettled.[471] The sitting

of the Scots and Irish members was also unsuccessfully opposed. Upon

the whole, the court party, notwithstanding this coalition of very

heterogeneous interests against them, were sufficiently powerful to

disappoint the hopes which the royalist intriguers had entertained. A

strong body of lawyers, led by Maynard, adhered to the government,

which was supported also on some occasions by a part of the

presbyterian interest, or, as then called, the moderate party; and

Richard would probably have concluded the session with no loss of

power, if either he or his parliament could have withstood the more

formidable cabal of Wallingford House. This knot of officers,

Fleetwood, Desborough, Berry, Sydenham, being the names most known

among them, formed a coalition with the republican faction, who

despaired of any success in parliament. The dissolution of that

assembly was the main article of this league. Alarmed at the notorious

caballing of the officers, the Commons voted that, during the sitting

of the parliament, there should be no general council, or meeting of

the officers of the army without leave of the protector and of both

houses.[472] Such a vote could only accelerate their own downfall.

Three days afterwards, the junto of Wallingford House insisted with

Richard that he should dissolve parliament; to which, according to the

advice of most of his council, and perhaps by an overruling necessity,

he gave his consent.[473] This was immediately followed by a

declaration of the council of officers, calling back the Long

Parliament, such as it had been expelled in 1653, to those seats which

had been filled meanwhile by so many transient successors.[474]

It is not in general difficult for an armed force to destroy a

government; but something else than the sword is required to create

one. The military conspirators were destitute of any leader whom they

would acknowledge, or who had capacity to go through the civil labours

of sovereignty; Lambert alone excepted, who was lying in wait for

another occasion. They might have gone on with Richard, as a pageant

of nominal authority. But their new allies, the commonwealth's men,

insisted upon restoring the Long Parliament.[475] It seemed now the

policy, as much as duty, of the officers to obey that civil power they

had set up. For to rule ostensibly was, as I have just observed, an

impracticable scheme. But the contempt they felt for their pretended

masters, and even a sort of necessity arising out of the blindness and

passion of that little oligarchy, drove them to a step still more

ruinous to their cause than that of deposing Richard, the expulsion

once more of that assembly, now worn out and ridiculous in all men's

eyes, yet seeming a sort of frail protection against mere anarchy, and

the terror of the sword. Lambert, the chief actor in this last act of

violence, and indeed many of the rest, might plead the right of

self-defence. The prevailing faction in the parliament, led by

Haslerig, a bold and headstrong man, perceived that, with very

inferior pretensions, Lambert was aiming to tread in the steps of

Cromwell; and, remembering their negligence of opportunities, as they

thought, in permitting the one to overthrow them, fancied that they

would anticipate the other. Their intemperate votes cashiering

Lambert, Desborough, and other officers, brought on, as every man of

more prudence than Haslerig must have foreseen, an immediate

revolution that crushed once more their boasted commonwealth.[476]

They revived again a few months after, not by any exertion of the

people, who hated alike both parties, in their behalf, but through the

disunion of their real masters, the army, and vented the impotent and

injudicious rage of a desperate faction on all who had not gone every

length on their side, till scarce any man of eminence was left to

muster under the standard of Haslerig and his little knot of

associates.[477]

_Impossibility of establishing a republic._--I can by no means agree

with those who find in the character of the English nation some

absolute incompatibility with a republican constitution of government.

Under favouring circumstances, it seems to me not at all incredible

that such a polity might have existed for many ages in great

prosperity, and without violent convulsion. For the English are, as a

people, little subject to those bursts of passion which inflame the

more imaginative multitude of southern climates, and render them both

apt for revolutions, and incapable of conducting them. Nor are they

again of that sluggish and stationary temper, which chokes all desire

of improvement, and even all zeal for freedom and justice, through

which some free governments have degenerated into corrupt oligarchies.

The most conspicuously successful experiment of republican

institutions (and those far more democratical than, according to the

general theory of politics, could be reconciled with perfect

tranquillity) has taken place in a people of English original; and

though much must here be ascribed to the peculiarly fortunate

situation of the nation to which I allude, we can hardly avoid giving

some weight to the good sense and well-balanced temperament, which

have come in their inheritance with our laws and our language. But

the establishment of free commonwealths depends much rather on

temporary causes, the influence of persons and particular events, and

all those intricacies in the course of Providence which we term

accident, than on any general maxims that can become the basis of

prior calculation. In the year 1659, it is manifest that no idea could

be more chimerical than that of a republican settlement in England.

The name, never familiar or venerable in English ears, was grown

infinitely odious; it was associated with the tyranny of ten years,

the selfish rapacity of the Rump, the hypocritical despotism of

Cromwell, the arbitrary sequestrations of committee-men, the

iniquitous decimations of military prefects, the sale of British

citizens for slavery in the West Indies, the blood of some shed on the

scaffold without legal trial, the tedious imprisonment of many with

denial of the habeas corpus, the exclusion of the ancient gentry, the

persecution of the Anglican church, the bacchanalian rant of

sectaries, the morose preciseness of puritans, the extinction of the

frank and cordial joyousness of the national character. Were the

people again to endure the mockery of the good old cause, as the

commonwealth's men affected to style the interests of their little

faction, and be subject to Lambert's notorious want of principle, or

to Vane's contempt of ordinances (a godly mode of expressing the same

thing), or to Haslerig's fury, or to Harrison's fanaticism, or to the

fancies of those lesser schemers, who in this utter confusion and

abject state of their party, were amusing themselves with plans of

perfect commonwealths, and debating whether there should be a senate

as well as a representation; whether a given number should go out by

rotation; and all those details of political mechanism so important in

the eyes of theorists?[478] Every project of this description must

have wanted what alone could give it either the pretext of legitimate

existence, or the chance of permanency, popular consent; the

republican party, if we exclude those who would have had a protector,

and those fanatics who expected the appearance of Jesus Christ, was

incalculably small; not, perhaps, amounting in the whole nation to

more than a few hundred persons.

_Intrigues of the royalists._--The little court of Charles at Brussels

watched with trembling hope these convulsive struggles of their

enemies. During the protectorship of Oliver, their best chance

appeared to be, that some of the numerous schemes for his

assassination might take effect. Their correspondence indeed,

especially among the presbyterian or neutral party, became more

extensive;[479] but these men were habitually cautious: and the

Marquis of Ormond, who went over to England in the beginning of 1658,

though he reported the disaffection to be still more universal than he

had expected, was forced to add that there was little prospect of a

rising until foreign troops should be landed in some part of the

country; an aid which Spain had frequently promised, but, with an

English fleet at sea, could not very easily furnish.[480] The death of

their puissant enemy brightened the visions of the royalists. Though

the apparent peaceableness of Richard's government gave them some

mortification, they continued to spread their toils through zealous

emissaries, and found a very general willingness to restore the

ancient constitution under its hereditary sovereign. Besides the

cavaliers, who, though numerous and ardent, were impoverished and

suspected, the chief presbyterians, Lords Fairfax and Willoughby, the

Earls of Manchester and Denbigh, Sir William Waller, Sir George Booth,

Sir Ashley Cooper, Mr. Popham of Somerset, Mr. Howe of Glocester, Sir

Horatio Townshend of Norfolk, with more or less of zeal and activity,

pledged themselves to the royal cause.[481] Lord Fauconberg, a

royalist by family, who had married a daughter of Cromwell, undertook

the important office of working on his brothers-in-law, Richard and

Henry, whose position, in respect to the army and republican party,

was so hazardous. It seems, in fact, that Richard, even during his

continuance in power, had not refused to hear the king's agents,[482]

and hopes were entertained of him: yet at that time even he could not

reasonably be expected to abandon his apparent interests. But soon

after his fall from power, while his influence, or rather that of his

father's memory, was still supposed considerable with Montagu, Monk,

and Lockhart, they negotiated with him to procure the accession of

those persons, and of his brother Henry, for a pension of £20,000 a

year, and a title.[483] It soon appeared however that those prudent

veterans of revolution would not embark under such a pilot, and that

Richard was not worth purchasing on the lowest terms. Even Henry

Cromwell, with whom a separate treaty had been carried on, and who is

said to have determined at one time to proclaim the king at Dublin,

from want of courage, or, as is more probable, of seriousness in what

must have seemed so unnatural an undertaking, submitted quietly to the

vote of parliament that deprived him of the command of Ireland.[484]

_Conspiracy of 1659._--The conspiracy, if indeed so general a concert

for the restoration of ancient laws and liberties ought to have so

equivocal an appellation, became ripe in the summer of 1659. The

royalists were to appear in arms in different quarters; several

principal towns to be seized: but as the moment grew nigh, the courage

of most began to fail. Twenty years of depression and continual

failure mated the spirits of the cavaliers. The shade of Cromwell

seemed to hover over and protect the wreck of his greatness. Sir

George Booth, almost alone, rose in Cheshire; every other scheme,

intended to be executed simultaneously, failing through the increased

prudence of those concerned, or the precautions taken by the

government on secret intelligence of the plots; and Booth, thus

deserted, made less resistance to Lambert than perhaps was in his

power.[485] This discomfiture, of course, damped the expectations of

the king's party. The presbyterians thought themselves ill-used by

their new allies, though their own friends had been almost equally

cautious.[486] Sir Richard Willis, an old cavalier, and in all the

secrets of their conspiracy, was detected in being a spy both of

Cromwell and of the new government; a discovery which struck

consternation into the party, who could hardly trust any one else with

greater security.[487] In a less favourable posture of affairs, these

untoward circumstances might have ruined Charles's hopes; they served,

as it was, to make it evident that he must look to some more

efficacious aid than a people's good wishes for his restoration.

The royalists in England, who played so deep a stake on the king's

account, were not unnaturally desirous that he should risk something

in the game, and continually pressed that either he or one of his

brothers would land on the coast. His standard would become a

rallying-point for the well-affected, and create such a demonstration

of public sentiment as would overthrow the present unstable

government. But Charles, not by nature of a chivalrous temper, shrunk

from an enterprise which was certainly very hazardous, unless he could

have obtained a greater assistance of troops from the Low Countries

than was to be hoped.[488] He was as little inclined to permit the

Duke of York's engaging in it, on account of the differences that had

existed between them, and his knowledge of an intrigue that was going

forward in England, principally among the catholics, but with the

mischievous talents of the Duke of Buckingham at its head, to set up

the duke instead of himself.[489] He gave, however, fair words to his

party, and continued for some time on the French coast, as if waiting

for his opportunity. It was in great measure, as I suspect, to rid

himself of this importunity, that he set out on his long and very

needless journey to the foot of the Pyrenees. Thither the two monarchs

of France and Spain, wearied with twenty years of hostility without a

cause and without a purpose, had sent their minister to conclude the

celebrated treaty which bears the name of those mountains. Charles had

long cherished hopes that the first fruits of their reconciliation

would be a joint armament to place him on the English throne: many of

his adherents almost despaired of any other means of restoration. But

Lewis de Haro was a timid statesman, and Mazarin a cunning one: there

was little to expect from their generosity; and the price of

assistance might probably be such as none but desperate and

unscrupulous exiles would offer, and the English nation would with

unanimous indignation reject. It was well for Charles that he

contracted no public engagement with these foreign powers, whose

co-operation must either have failed of success, or have placed on his

head a degraded and unstable crown. The full toleration of popery in

England, its establishment in Ireland, its profession by the sovereign

and his family, the surrender of Jamaica, Dunkirk, and probably the

Norman Islands, were conditions on which the people might have thought

the restoration of the Stuart line too dearly obtained.

It was a more desirable object for the king to bring over, if

possible, some of the leaders of the commonwealth. Except Vane,

accordingly, and the decided republicans, there was hardly any man of

consequence whom his agents did not attempt, or, at least, from whom

they did not entertain hopes. There stood at this time conspicuous

above the rest, not all of them in ability, but in apparent power of

serving the royal cause by their defection, Fleetwood, Lambert, and

Monk. The first had discovered, as far as his understanding was

capable of perceiving anything, that he had been the dupe of more

crafty men in the cabals against Richard Cromwell, whose complete fall

from power he had neither designed nor foreseen. In pique and

vexation, he listened to the overtures of the royalist agents, and

sometimes, if we believe their assertions, even promised to declare

for the king.[490] But his resolutions were not to be relied upon, nor

was his influence likely to prove considerable; though from his post

of lieutenant-general of the army, and long accustomed precedence, he

obtained a sort of outward credit far beyond his capacity. Lambert was

of a very different stamp; eager, enterprising, ambitious, but

destitute of the qualities that inspire respect or confidence. Far

from the weak enthusiasm of Fleetwood, he gave offence by displaying

less show of religion than the temper of his party required, and still

more by a current suspicion that his secret faith was that of the

church of Rome, to which the partiality of the catholics towards him

gave support.[491] The crafty unfettered ambition of Lambert rendered

it not unlikely that--finding his own schemes of sovereignty

impracticable, he would make terms with the king; and there were not

wanting those who recommended the latter to secure his services by the

offer of marrying his daughter;[492] but it does not appear that any

actual overtures were made on either side.

_Interference of Monk._--There remained one man of eminent military

reputation, in the command of a considerable insulated army, to whom

the royalists anxiously looked with alternate hope and despondency.

Monk's early connections were with the king's party, among whom he had

been defeated and taken prisoner by Fairfax at Namptwich. Yet even in

this period of his life he had not escaped suspicions of disaffection,

which he effaced by continuing in prison till the termination of the

war in England. He then accepted a commission from the parliament to

serve against the Irish; and now falling entirely into his new line of

politics, became strongly attached to Cromwell, by whom he was left in

the military government, or rather viceroyalty of Scotland, which he

had reduced to subjection, and kept under with a vigorous hand.

Charles had once, it is said, attempted to seduce him by a letter from

Cologne, which he instantly transmitted to the protector.[493] Upon

Oliver's death, he wrote a very sensible letter to Richard Cromwell,

containing his advice for the government. He recommends him to obtain

the affections of the moderate presbyterian ministers, who have much

influence over the people, to summon to his House of Lords the wisest

and most faithful of the old nobility and some of the leading gentry,

to diminish the number of superior officers in the army, by throwing

every two regiments into one, and to take into his council as his

chief advisers Whitelock, St. John, Lord Broghill, Sir Richard Onslow,

Pierrepont, and Thurloe.[494] The judiciousness of this advice is the

surest evidence of its sincerity, and must leave no doubt on our minds

that Monk was at that time very far from harbouring any thoughts of

the king's restoration.

But when, through the force of circumstances and the deficiencies in

the young protector's capacity, he saw the house of Cromwell for ever

fallen, it was for Monk to consider what course he should follow, and

by what means the nation was to be rescued from the state of anarchy

that seemed to menace it. That very different plans must have passed

through his mind before he commenced his march from Scotland, it is

easy to conjecture; but at what time his determination was finally

taken, we cannot certainly pronounce.[495] It would be the most

honourable supposition to believe that he was sincere in those solemn

protestations of adherence to the commonwealth which he poured forth,

as well during his march as after his arrival in London; till

discovering, at length, the popular zeal for the king's restoration,

he concurred in a change which it would have been absurd, and perhaps

impracticable, to resist. This however seems not easily reconcilable

to Monk's proceedings in new-modelling his army, and confiding power,

both in Scotland and England, to men of known intentions towards

royalty; nor did his assurances of support to the republican party

become less frequent or explicit at a time when every one must believe

that he had taken his resolution, and even after he had communicated

with the king. I incline therefore, upon the whole, to believe that

Monk, not accustomed to respect the Rump Parliament, and incapable,

both by his temperament and by the course of his life, of any

enthusiasm for the name of liberty, had satisfied himself as to the

expediency of the king's restoration from the time that the Cromwells

had sunk below his power to assist them; though his projects were

still subservient to his own security, which he was resolved not to

forfeit by any premature declaration or unsuccessful enterprise. If

the coalition of cavaliers and presbyterians, and the strong bent of

the entire nation, had not convinced this wary dissembler that he

could not fail of success, he would have continued true to his

professions as the general of a commonwealth, content with crushing

his rival Lambert, and breaking that fanatical interest which he most

disliked. That he aimed at such a sovereignty as Cromwell had usurped

has been the natural conjecture of many, but does not appear to me

either warranted by any presumptive evidence, or consonant to the good

sense and phlegmatic temper of Monk.

At the moment when, with a small but veteran army of 7000 men, he took

up his quarters in London, it seemed to be within his arbitrament

which way the scale should preponderate. On one side were the wishes

of the nation, but restrained by fear; on the other, established

possession, maintained by the sword, but rendered precarious by

disunion and treachery. It is certainly very possible that, by keeping

close to the parliament, Monk might have retarded, at least for a

considerable time, the great event which has immortalised him. But it

can hardly be said that the king's restoration was rather owing to him

than to the general sentiments of the nation and almost the necessity

of circumstances, which had already made every judicious person

anticipate the sole termination of our civil discord which they had

prepared. Whitelock, who, incapable of refusing compliance with the

ruling power, had sat in the committee of safety established in

October 1659 by the officers who had expelled the parliament, has

recorded a curious anecdote, whence we may collect how little was

wanting to prevent Monk from being the great mover in the restoration.

He had for some time, as appears by his journal, entertained a

persuasion that the general meditated nothing but the king's return,

to which he was doubtless himself well inclined, except from some

apprehension for the public interest, and some also for his own. This

induced him to have a private conference with Fleetwood, which he

enters as of the 22nd December 1659, wherein, after pointing out the

probable designs of Monk, he urged him either to take possession of

the Tower, and declare for a free parliament, in which he would have

the assistance of the city, or to send some trusty person to Breda,

who might offer to bring in the king upon such terms as should be

settled. Both these propositions were intended as different methods of

bringing about a revolution, which he judged to be inevitable. "By

this means," he contended, "Fleetwood might make terms with the king

for preservation of himself and his friends, and of that cause, in a

good measure, in which they had been engaged; but, if it were left to

Monk, they and all that had been done would be left to the danger of

destruction. Fleetwood then asked me, 'If I would be willing to go

myself upon this employment?' I answered, 'that I would go, if

Fleetwood thought fit to send me.' And after much other discourse to

this effect, Fleetwood seemed fully satisfied to send me to the king,

and desired me to go and prepare myself forthwith for the journey; and

that in the meantime Fleetwood and his friends would prepare the

instructions for me, so that I might begin my journey this evening or

to-morrow morning early.

"I going away from Fleetwood, met Vane, Desborough, and Berry in the

next room, coming to speak with Fleetwood, who thereupon desired me to

stay a little; and I suspected what would be the issue of their

consultation, and within a quarter of an hour Fleetwood came to me and

in much passion said to me, 'I cannot do it, I cannot do it.' I

desired his reason why he could not do it. He answered, 'Those

gentlemen have remembered me; and it is true, that I am engaged not to

do any such thing without my Lord Lambert's consent.' I replied, 'that

Lambert was at too great a distance to have his consent to this

business, which must be instantly acted.' Fleetwood again said, 'I

cannot do it without him.' Then I said, 'You will ruin yourself and

your friends.' He said, 'I cannot help it.' Then I told him I must

take my leave, and so we parted."[496]

Whatever might have been in the power of Monk, by adhering to his

declarations of obedience to the parliament, it would have been too

late for him, after consenting to the restoration of the secluded

members to their seats on February 21, 1660, to withstand the

settlement which it seems incredible that he should not at that time

have desired. That he continued, for at least six weeks afterwards,

in a course of astonishing dissimulation, so as to deceive, in a great

measure, almost all the royalists, who were distrusting his intentions

at the very moment when he made his first and most private tender of

service to the king through Sir John Grenville about the beginning of

April, might at first seem rather to have proceeded from a sort of

inability to shake off his inveterate reservedness, than from

consummate prudence and discretion. For any sudden risings in the

king's favour, or an intrigue in the council of state, might easily

have brought about the restoration without his concurrence; and, even

as it was, the language held in the House of Commons before their

dissolution, the votes expunging all that appeared on their journals

against the regal government and the House of Lords,[497] and, above

all, the course of the elections for the new parliament, made it

sufficiently evident that the general had delayed his assurances of

loyalty till they had lost a part of their value. It is however a full

explanation of Monk's public conduct, that he was not secure of the

army, chiefly imbued with fanatical principles, and bearing an

inveterate hatred towards the name of Charles Stuart. A correspondent

of the king writes to him on the 28th of March: "the army is not yet

in a state to hear your name publicly."[498] In the beginning of that

month, many of the officers, instigated by Haslerig and his friends,

had protested to Monk against the proceedings of the house, insisting

that they should abjure the king and House of Lords. He repressed

their mutinous spirit, and bade them obey the parliament, as he should

do.[499] Hence he redoubled his protestations of abhorrence of

monarchy, and seemed for several weeks, in exterior demonstrations,

rather the grand impediment to the king's restoration, than the one

person who was to have the credit of it.[500] Meanwhile he silently

proceeded in displacing the officers whom he could least trust, and

disposing the regiments near to the metropolis, or at a distance,

according to his knowledge of their tempers; the parliament having

given him a commission as lord general of all the forces in the three

kingdoms.[501] The commissioners appointed by parliament for raising

the militia in each county were chiefly gentlemen of the presbyterian

party; and there seemed likely to be such a considerable force under

their orders as might rescue the nation from its ignominious servitude

to the army. In fact, some of the royalists expected that the great

question would not be carried without an appeal to the sword.[502] The

delay of Monk in privately assuring the king of his fidelity is still

not easy to be explained, but may have proceeded from a want of

confidence in Charles's secrecy, or that of his counsellors. It must

be admitted that Lord Clarendon, who has written with some minuteness

and accuracy this important part of his history, has more than

insinuated (especially as we now read his genuine language, which the

ill faith of his original editors had shamefully garbled) that Monk

entertained no purposes in the king's favour till the last moment; but

a manifest prejudice that shows itself in all his writings against the

general, derived partly from offence at his extreme reserve and

caution during this period, partly from personal resentment of Monk's

behaviour at the time of his own impeachment, greatly takes off from

the weight of the noble historian's judgment.[503]

_Difficulties about the restoration._--The months of March and April

1660 were a period of extreme inquietude, during which every one spoke

of the king's restoration as imminent, yet none could distinctly

perceive by what means it would be effected, and much less how the

difficulties of such a settlement could be overcome.[504] As the

moment approached, men turned their attention more to the obstacles

and dangers that lay in their way. The restoration of a banished

family, concerning whom they knew little, and what they knew not

entirely to their satisfaction, with ruined, perhaps revengeful,

followers; the returning ascendancy of a distressed party, who had

sustained losses that could not be repaired without fresh changes of

property, injuries that could not be atoned without fresh severities;

the conflicting pretensions of two churches, one loth to release its

claim, the other to yield its possession; the unsettled dissensions

between the crown and parliament, suspended only by civil war and

usurpation; all seemed pregnant with such difficulties that prudent

men could hardly look forward to the impending revolution without some

hesitation and anxiety.[505] Hence Pierrepont, one of the wisest

statesmen in England, though not so far implicated in past

transactions as to have much to fear, seems never to have overcome his

repugnance to the recall of the king; and I am by no means convinced

that the slowness of Monk himself was not in some measure owing to his

sense of the embarrassments that might attend that event. The

presbyterians, generally speaking, had always been on their guard

against an unconditional restoration. They felt much more of hatred to

the prevailing power than of attachment to the house of Stuart; and

had no disposition to relinquish, either as to church or state

government, those principles for which they had fought against Charles

the First. Hence they began, from the very time that they entered into

the coalition, that is, the spring and summer of 1659, to talk of the

treaty of Newport, as if all that had passed since their vote of 5th

December 1648, that the king's concessions were a sufficient ground

whereon to proceed to the settlement of the kingdom, had been like an

hideous dream, from which they had awakened to proceed exactly in

their former course.[506] The council of state, appointed on the 23rd

of February, two days after the return of the secluded members,

consisted principally of this party. And there can, I conceive, be no

question that, if Monk had continued his neutrality to the last, they

would, in conjunction with the new parliament, have sent over

propositions for the king's acceptance. Meetings were held of the

chief presbyterian lords, Manchester, Northumberland, Bedford, Say,

with Pierrepont (who finding it too late to prevent the king's return,

endeavoured to render it as little dangerous as possible), Hollis,

Annesley, Sir William Waller, Lewis, and other leaders of that party.

Monk sometimes attended on these occasions, and always urged the most

rigid limitations.[507] His sincerity in this was the less suspected,

that his wife, to whom he was notoriously submissive, was entirely

presbyterian, though a friend to the king; and his own preference of

that sect had always been declared in a more consistent and

unequivocal manner than was usual to his dark temper.

These projected limitations, which but a few weeks before Charles

would have thankfully accepted, seemed now intolerable; so rapidly do

men learn, in the course of prosperous fortune, to scorn what they

just before hardly presumed to expect. Those seemed his friends, not

who desired to restore him, but who would do so at the least sacrifice

of his power and pride. Several of the council, and others in high

posts, sent word that they would resist the imposition of unreasonable

terms.[508] Monk himself redeemed his ambiguous and dilatory

behaviour by taking the restoration, as it were, out of the hands of

the council, and suggesting the judicious scheme of anticipating their

proposals by the king's letter to the two houses of parliament. For

this purpose he had managed, with all his dissembling pretences of

commonwealth principles, or, when he was (as it were) compelled to lay

them aside, of insisting on rigorous limitations, to prevent any

overtures from the council, who were almost entirely presbyterian,

before the meeting of parliament, which would have considerably

embarrassed the king's affairs.[509] The elections meantime had taken

a course which the faction now in power by no means regarded with

satisfaction. Though the late House of Commons had passed a resolution

that no person who had assisted in any war against the parliament

since 1642, unless he should since have manifested his good affection

towards it, should be capable of being elected; yet this, even if it

had been regarded, as it was not, by the people, would have been a

feeble barrier against the royalist party, composed in a great measure

of young men who had grown up under the commonwealth, and of those

who, living in the parliamentary counties during the civil war, had

paid a reluctant obedience to its power.[510] The tide ran so

strongly for the king's friends, that it was as much as the

presbyterians could effect, with the weight of government in their

hands, to obtain about an equality of strength with the cavaliers in

the convention parliament.[511]

It has been a frequent reproach to the conductors of this great

revolution, that the king was restored without those terms and

limitations which might secure the nation against his abuse of their

confidence; and this, not only by contemporaries who had suffered by

the political and religious changes consequent on the restoration, or

those who, in after times, have written with some prepossession

against the English church and constitutional monarchy, but by the

most temperate and reasonable men; so that it has become almost

regular to cast on the convention parliament, and more especially on

Monk, the imputation of having abandoned public liberty, and brought

on, by their inconsiderate loyalty or self-interested treachery, the

misgovernment of the two last Stuarts, and the necessity of their

ultimate expulsion. But, as this is a very material part of our

history, and those who pronounce upon it have not always a very

distinct notion either of what was or what could have been done, it

may be worth while to consider the matter somewhat more analytically;

confining myself, it is to be observed, in the present chapter, to

what took place before the king's personal assumption of the

government on the 29th of May 1660. The subsequent proceedings of the

convention parliament fall within another period.

We may remark, in the first place, that the unconditional restoration

of Charles the Second is sometimes spoken of in too hyperbolical

language, as if he had come in as a sort of conqueror, with the laws

and liberties of the people at his discretion. Yet he was restored to

nothing but the bounded prerogatives of a king of England; bounded by

every ancient and modern statute, including those of the long

parliament, which had been enacted for the subjects' security. If it

be true, as I have elsewhere observed, that the long parliament, in

the year 1641, had established, in its most essential parts, our

existing constitution, it can hardly be maintained that fresh

limitations and additional securities were absolutely indispensable,

before the most fundamental of all its principles, the government by

King, Lords, and Commons, could be permitted to take its regular

course. Those who so vehemently reprobate the want of conditions at

the restoration would do well to point out what conditions should have

been imposed, and what mischiefs they can probably trace from their

omission.[512] They should be able also to prove that, in the

circumstances of the time, it was quite as feasible and convenient to

make certain secure and obligatory provisions the terms of the king's

restoration, as seems to be taken for granted.

_Plan of reviving the treaty of Newport inexpedient._--The chief

presbyterians appear to have considered the treaty of Newport, if not

as fit to be renewed in every article, yet at least as the basis of

the compact into which they were to enter with Charles the

Second.[513] But were the concessions wrested in this treaty from his

father, in the hour of peril and necessity, fit to become the

permanent rules of the English constitution? Turn to the articles

prescribed by the long parliament in that negotiation. Not to mention

the establishment of a rigorous presbytery in the church, they had

insisted on the exclusive command of all forces by land and sea for

twenty years, with the sole power of levying and expending the monies

necessary for their support; on the nomination of the principal

officers of state and of the judges during the same period; and on the

exclusion of the king's adherents from all trust or political power.

Admit even that the insincerity and arbitrary principles of Charles

the First had rendered necessary such extraordinary precautions, was

it to be supposed that the executive power should not revert to his

successor? Better it were, beyond comparison, to maintain the

perpetual exclusion of his family than to mock them with such a

titular crown, the certain cause of discontent and intrigue, and to

mingle premature distrust with their professions of affection. There

was undoubtedly much to apprehend from the king's restoration; but it

might be expected that a steady regard for public liberty in the

parliament and the nation would obviate that danger without any

momentous change of the constitution; or that, if such a sentiment

should prove unhappily too weak, no guarantees of treaties or statutes

would afford a genuine security.

_Difficulty of framing conditions._--If, however, we were to be

convinced that the restoration was effected without a sufficient

safeguard against the future abuses of royal power, we must still

allow, on looking attentively at the circumstances, that there were

very great difficulties in the way of any stipulations for that

purpose. It must be evident that any formal treaty between Charles and

the English government, as it stood in April 1660, was inconsistent

with their common principle. That government was, by its own

declarations, only _de facto_, only temporary; the return of the

secluded members to their seats, and the votes they subsequently

passed, held forth to the people that everything done since the force

put on the house in December 1648 was by an usurpation; the

restoration of the ancient monarchy was implied in all recent

measures, and was considered as out of all doubt by the whole kingdom.

But between a king of England and his subjects no treaty, as such,

could be binding; there was no possibility of entering into

stipulations with Charles, though in exile, to which a court of

justice would pay the slightest attention, except by means of acts of

parliament. It was doubtless possible that the council of state might

have entered into a secret agreement with him on certain terms, to be

incorporated afterwards into bills, as at the treaty of Newport. But

at that treaty his father, though in prison, was the acknowledged

sovereign of England; and it is manifest that the king's recognition

must precede the enactment of any law. It is equally obvious that the

contracting parties would no longer be the same, and that the

conditions that seemed indispensable to the council of state, might

not meet with the approbation of parliament. It might occur to an

impatient people, that the former were not invested with such legal or

permanent authority as could give them any pretext for bargaining with

the king, even in behalf of public liberty.

But, if the council of state, or even the parliament on its first

meeting, had resolved to tender any hard propositions to the king, as

the terms, if not of his recognition, yet of his being permitted to

exercise the royal functions, was there not a possibility that he

might demur about their acceptance, that a negotiation might ensue to

procure some abatement, that, in the interchange of couriers between

London and Brussels, some weeks at least might be whiled away?

Clarendon, we are sure, inflexible and uncompromising of his master's

honour, would have dissuaded such enormous sacrifices as had been

exacted from the late king. And during this delay, while no legal

authority would have subsisted, so that no officer could have

collected the taxes or executed process without liability to

punishment, in what a precarious state would the parliament have

stood! On the one hand, the nation almost maddened with the

intoxication of reviving loyalty, and rather prone to cast at the

king's feet the privileges and liberties it possessed than to demand

fresh security for them, might insist upon his immediate return, and

impair the authority of parliament. On the other hand, the army,

desperately irreconcilable to the name of Stuart, and sullenly

resenting the hypocrisy that had deluded them, though they knew no

longer where to seek a leader, were accessible to the furious

commonwealth's men, who, rushing as it were with lighted torches along

their ranks, endeavoured to rekindle a fanaticism that had not quite

consumed its fuel.[514] The escape of Lambert from the Tower had

struck a panic into all the kingdom; some such accident might again

furnish a rallying point for the disaffected, and plunge the country

into an unfathomable abyss of confusion. Hence, the motion of Sir

Matthew Hale, in the convention parliament, to appoint a committee who

should draw up propositions to be sent over for the king's acceptance,

does not appear to me well timed and expedient; nor can I censure Monk

for having objected to it.[515] The business in hand required greater

despatch. If the king's restoration was an essential blessing, it was

not to be thrown away in the debates of a committee. A wary,

scrupulous, conscientious English lawyer, like Hale, is always wanting

in the rapidity and decision necessary for revolutions, though he may

be highly useful in preventing them from going too far.

It is, I confess, more probable that the king would have accepted

almost any conditions tendered to him; such at least would have been

the advice of most of his counsellors; and his own conduct in Scotland

was sufficient to show how little any sense of honour or dignity would

have stood in his way. But on what grounds did his English friends,

nay some of the presbyterians themselves, advise his submission to

the dictates of that party? It was in the expectation that the next

free parliament, summoned by his own writ, would undo all this work of

stipulation, and restore him to an unfettered prerogative. And this

expectation there was every ground, from the temper of the nation, to

entertain. Unless the convention parliament had bargained for its own

perpetuity, or the privy council had been made immovable, or a

military force, independent of the Crown, had been kept up to overawe

the people (all of them most unconstitutional and abominable

usurpations), there was no possibility of maintaining the conditions,

whatever they might have been, from the want of which so much mischief

is fancied to have sprung. Evils did take place, dangers did arise,

the liberties of England were once more impaired; but these are far

less to be ascribed to the actors in the restoration than to the next

parliament, and to the nation who chose it.

I must once more request the reader to take notice that I am not here

concerned with the proceedings of the convention parliament after the

king's return to England, which, in some respects, appear to me

censurable; but discussing the question, whether they were guilty of

any fault in not tendering bills of limitation on the prerogative, as

preliminary conditions of his restoration to the exercise of his

lawful authority. And it will be found, upon a review of what took

place in that interregnum from their meeting together on the 25th of

April 1660, to Charles's arrival in London on the 29th of May, that

they were less unmindful than has been sometimes supposed, of

provisions to secure the kingdom against the perils which had seemed

to threaten it in the restoration.

On the 25th of April, the Commons met and elected Grimston, a moderate

presbyterian, as their speaker, somewhat against the secret wish of

the cavaliers, who, elated by their success in the elections, were

beginning to aim at superiority, and to show a jealousy of their late

allies.[516] On the same day, the doors of the House of Lords were

found open; and ten peers, all of whom had sat in 1648, took their

places as if nothing more than a common adjournment had passed in the

interval.[517] There was, however, a very delicate and embarrassing

question, that had been much discussed in their private meetings. The

object of these, as I have mentioned, was to impose terms on the king,

and maintain the presbyterian ascendancy. But the peers of this party

were far from numerous, and must be outvoted, if all the other lawful

members of the house should be admitted to their privileges. Of these

there were three classes. The first was of the peers who had come to

their titles since the commencement of the civil war, and whom there

was no colour of justice, nor any vote of the house to exclude. To

some of these accordingly they caused letters to be directed; and the

others took their seats without objection on the 26th and 27th of

April, on the latter of which days thirty-eight peers were

present.[518] The second class was of those who had joined Charles the

First, and had been excluded from sitting in the house by votes of the

long parliament. These it had been in contemplation among the

presbyterian junto to keep out; but the glaring inconsistency of such

a measure with the popular sentiment, and the strength that the first

class had given to the royalist interest among the aristocracy,

prevented them from insisting on it. A third class consisted of those

who had been created since the great seal was taken to York in 1642;

some by the late king, others by the present in exile; and these,

according to the fundamental principle of the parliamentary side, were

incapable of sitting in the house. It was probably one of the

conditions on which some meant to insist, conformably to the articles

of the treaty of Newport, that the new peers should be perpetually

incapable; or even that none should in future have the right of

voting, without the concurrence of both houses of parliament. An order

was made therefore on May 4 that no lords created since 1642 should

sit. This was vacated by a subsequent resolution of May 31.

A message was sent down to the Commons on April 27, desiring a

conference on the great affairs of the kingdom. This was the first

time that word had been used for more than eleven years. But the

Commons, in returning an answer to this message, still employed the

word nation. It was determined that the conference should take place

on the ensuing Tuesday, the first of May.[519] In this conference,

there can be no doubt that the question of further securities against

the power of the Crown would have been discussed. But Monk, whether

from conviction of their inexpedience or to atone for his ambiguous

delay, had determined to prevent any encroachment on the prerogative.

He caused the king's letter to the council of state, and to the two

houses of parliament, to be delivered on that very day. A burst of

enthusiastic joy testified their long repressed wishes; and, when the

conference took place, the Earl of Manchester was instructed to let

the Commons know that the Lords do own and declare that, according to

the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the government is

and ought to be by King, Lords, and Commons. On the same day, the

Commons resolved to agree in this vote; and appointed a committee to

report what pretended acts and ordinances were inconsistent with

it.[520]

It is however so far from being true that this convention gave itself

up to a blind confidence in the king, that their journals during the

month of May bear witness to a considerable activity in furthering

provisions which the circumstances appeared to require. They appointed

a committee, on May 3rd, to consider of the king's letter and

declaration, both holding forth, it will be remembered, all promises

of indemnity, and everything that could tranquillise apprehension, and

to propose bills accordingly, especially for taking away military

tenures. One bill was brought into the house, to secure lands

purchased from the trustees of the late parliament; another, to

establish ministers already settled in benefices; a third, for a

general indemnity; a fourth, to take away tenures in chivalry and

wardship; a fifth, to make void all grants of honour or estate, made

by the late or present king since May 1642. Finally, on the very 29th

of May, we find a bill read twice and committed, for the confirmation

of privilege of parliament, magna charta, the petition of right, and

other great constitutional statutes.[521] These measures, though some

of them were never completed, proved that the restoration was not

carried forward with so thoughtless a precipitancy and neglect of

liberty as has been asserted.