THE NOMINATED PARLIAMENT AND THE PROTECTORATE.
As at the trial of the King, so in the ejection of Parliament,
Cromwell had been thrown back on the employment of military force.
Legality was clearly against him on both occasions. Yet it must not
be forgotten that he was the last to concur in the employment of
force; and that there was much to be said for his assertion that the
sitting members were no Parliament. Reduced by the flight of Royalists
to the King in 1642 and by Pride's Purge in 1648, they had, after an
existence of twelve years and a half, little remaining to them of that
representative character which is the very being of a Parliament. At
all events, this time, at least, Cromwell was secure of popular favour.
Not a single voice was raised in defence of the expelled members. In
the evening some wag scrawled on the door of the Parliament House:
"This House to be let unfurnished". The Parliament disappeared amidst
general derision. For all that, the work before Cromwell was one of
enormous--perhaps even of hopeless--difficulty. Without Parliament
or King, the nation was thrown upon its own resources to reconstruct
its institutions as best it might. It was inevitable that in such
stress of storm it should hark back to the old paths, and should see
no prospect of settled government, save in the restoration of the
throne, or at least in the election of another Parliament. Yet this
was the very thing that Cromwell and all who were associated with
him most dreaded. It was but too probable that such a solution would
sweep away not only Puritanism, but all hope of political reform.
Everything for which the army had fought and for which the nation had
suffered was at stake, and it was not in human nature--certainly not in
Cromwell's nature--to make such a sacrifice without a struggle. That
such a struggle could only be prolonged with the support of the army
was self-evident. Cromwell, however, was the last of men to desire to
establish a purely military government, and the army, to do it justice,
was commanded by men who were, for the most part, desirous to support
their general in the experiment of establishing a civil government
which would have dispensed with the interference of military power.
The tragedy--the glorious tragedy--of Cromwell's subsequent career lay
in the impossibility of permanently checking the instincts of military
politicians to intervene in favour of those guarantees regarded by them
as indispensable for the maintenance of the cause which they had so
long upheld with all their might.
Distrust of the constituencies was the prominent feature of Cromwell's
next move. The compromise offered by him of the temporary establishment
of a non-elective body to prepare a basis of settlement whilst
Parliamentary institutions remained in abeyance, was now adopted by the
officers. Lambert,--who advocated a scheme for establishing a Council
of State, apparently with provision for the increased independence
of the executive, together with the election of a Parliament with
restricted functions,--was unable to enforce his views. A small Council
of State was established to carry on current affairs, but it was in
the Council of Officers that the main question of the constitution was
to be determined. Cromwell, after some hesitation, rallied to a very
different scheme which had been suggested by Harrison, the brilliant
soldier who dreaded to see the government in the hands of any but the
Saints. Cromwell, however, whilst accepting Harrison's views on the
whole, determined to modify them, in order to make the new assembly
something more than a group of pious fanatics. He was consequently
now anxious that it should include notable personages--even Fairfax
was suggested--who had contended against the King, but who had no
connection with the extreme sections of the community which found
favour in Harrison's eyes. It was eventually resolved that the Council
of Officers should invite nominations from the Congregational Churches
in each county, reserving to itself the power of rejecting persons so
named, and also of adding names which found no place on the list. On
June 8 the persons finally selected received writs issued in the name
of Cromwell as Lord General. An attempt had been made to secure the
inclusion not only of Fairfax but of Vane, but neither of them would
accept a place in the new assembly.
On July 4 the nominees of the army took their seats at Westminster.
Cromwell, at all events, threw himself entirely into the spirit of
the occasion. In a long speech he manifested his delight at seeing
the government at last entrusted to the hands of the godly. No such
authority, he proclaimed triumphantly, had ever before been entrusted
to men on the ground that they owned God and were owned by Him. For
once the emotional side of his nature had gained the upper hand over
his practical common-sense. In long detail he told of the misconduct
of the late Parliament, and repelled the idea that he had had any
intention of substituting his own authority for that of the discarded
House. It had been incumbent on him and his colleagues 'not to grasp
at the power ourselves, or to keep it in military hands, no, not for a
day, but, as far as God enabled us with strength and ability, to put
it into the hands of proper persons that might be called from the
several parts of the nation'. "This necessity," he proceeded to aver;
"and I hope we may say for ourselves, this integrity of concluding to
divest the sword of all power in the civil administrations, hath been
that that hath moved us to put you to this trouble." Then, enlarging
on the providential character of the mission of the members of the new
assembly, he urged them with many Scriptural quotations to take up
their authority as men whom God had placed as rulers of the land. What,
then, was to be said of that ideal of elected Parliaments, which had
sunk so deeply into the minds of that generation? "If it were a time,"
he suggested, "to compare your standing with those that have been
called by the suffrages of the people--which who can tell how soon God
may fit the people for such a thing? None can desire it more than I!
Would all were the Lord's people; as it was said, 'Would all the Lord's
people were prophets': I would all were fit to be called." In time,
indeed, this might be possible when the good and religious conduct of
this assembly had won the people to the love of godliness. "Is not this
the likeliest way to bring them to their liberties?" Finally, after
much enforcement of the encouragements held forth by the Prophets and
the Psalmists, he resigned all the power provisionally exercised by
himself into the hands of his hearers, announcing to them that their
power also was to be provisional. They were to hold it only till
November 3, 1654, and then to give place to a second assembly to be
elected by themselves--an assembly which was to sit for no more than a
year, in which time it was to make provision for the future government
of the country.
Contrary, as it would seem, to the intention of those by whom it
had been called, the new assembly audaciously assumed the name of
Parliament. Its real position being that of a mere body of nominees,
Lilburne was once more brought into the field. In 1649 Lilburne had
been tried and acquitted, but had subsequently been banished by the
Long Parliament, which had added to its sentence a declaration that he
would be guilty of felony if he, at any time, returned to England. He
now reappeared in London, where he was sent to prison, again tried, and
again acquitted. The line taken by him and his followers was that the
so-called Parliament now in existence was no Parliament at all, as it
was not elected by the people. With Cromwell's full consent, Lilburne
was retained in confinement, being ultimately removed to Jersey, where
no writ of habeas corpus could deliver him.
For a time Lilburne's attack consolidated the alliance between the Lord
General and the nominees to whom political power had been entrusted.
Yet it was not long before Cromwell's practical sense took alarm at
their proceedings. It was indeed not the case, as has often been
said, that the majority of the members were mere enthusiasts, but
the enthusiasts settled down to Parliamentary work, seldom absenting
themselves from the House, and being always ready to vote when a
division was called; whilst those who distrusted them could not always
be brought to a due sense of the importance of their Parliamentary
duties, and were apt to be led away by interest or pleasure from
supporting their opinions by their votes. Two questions were soon found
to divide the parties, that of law reform, more especially the reform
of Chancery, and that of a religious organisation other than compulsory
uniformity under Bishops or Presbyters. On both these questions
Cromwell was intensely interested, and there can be little doubt that
if the nominated Parliament had conducted itself with due regard for
practical exigencies, it would have retained his good-will to the end.
Unfortunately this was not the case. It proposed a total abolition
of the Court of Chancery, thus handing over to the hostile judges of
the Common Law that system of equity which had been growing up with
beneficial results for generations, whilst it also took in hand with a
light heart the codification of the law, though not a single practising
lawyer had a seat in the House, in the hope that 'the great volumes
of law would come to be reduced into the bigness of a pocket book'.
No wonder that Cromwell dropped into a friend's ear the words: "I am
more troubled now with the fool than with the knave". No wonder either
that in September he drew aside from Harrison, under whose influence he
had decided in favour of summoning the nominees, and that he listened
with greater respect to Lambert, the military representative of
constitutionalism and the determined opponent of political fanaticism.
Cromwell's position was rendered difficult by his association with
this ill-starred assembly. On September 14 a broadside was scattered
in the streets charging him with treason to 'his Lords the people of
England,' not because he had broken up the miserable remnant of the
Long Parliament, but because he had stood in the way of the election of
a new House, and it is highly probable that a large number of people
who had nothing to do with the distribution of broadsides shared in
this opinion. Still greater was the danger of an appeal to the army,
with which the writers concluded. It was known that many of the
soldiers, and even of the officers, were restive under the suspension
of popular elections, and it was found necessary to secure submission
by cashiering Lieutenant-Colonel Joyce, who had formerly, as a cornet,
carried off the King from Holmby House, and who now threw himself on
the side of those who cried out for constitutional rights.
On the subject of Church organisation, Parliament was as subversive
as on the subject of law reform, many of its members held with the
Fifth Monarchy preachers, that the government of the State ought to be
exclusively in the hands of the Saints, and, not unnaturally, concluded
that they were themselves the Saints; thus taking a broad issue in
defiance of the theory that the government ought to be administered or
controlled by the elected representatives of the nation. The immediate
dispute, however, turned on the unwillingness of the advanced party to
continue any sort of endowment of the clergy. Cromwell, it is true,
on more than one occasion had expressed himself strongly against the
existing tithe system and would have been perfectly ready to concur
in any plan for the removal of its abuses, or for substituting for
it--as had been suggested in _The Agreement of the People_ presented
by the army--a more equitable mode of raising the money needed by the
clergy. Further than that he was not likely to go, and matters were
brought to a crisis by a resolution passed on November 17 for the
abolition of patronage, and still more by the decision of the House on
December 10--though only by a majority of two--to reject a scheme of
Church-government founded in the main on the lines drawn by Owen, in
which the payment of tithes was taken as a financial basis.
Some time before the last vote was taken, the principal officers, under
Lambert's leadership, had had under consideration a plan of a written
constitution in which the executive power was to be strengthened and
conferred upon Cromwell with the title of King, whilst the legislative
power was to be conferred on an elected assembly, thus embodying the
ideas which had been enunciated by Cromwell in his conference with the
lawyers and politicians at the end of 1651. When this constitution was
complete it was shown to Cromwell, who objected to the royal title,
and who seems also to have been unwilling to have anything to do with
another violent dissolution. On December 10, when the vote on Church
organisation was taken, Lambert and his allies found their opportunity.
It is probable that they promised Cromwell that the House should be
dissolved by its own action, and that, on receiving this assurance,
he preferred not to be informed of the course by which this desirable
end was to be attained. The course indeed was simple enough. The
conservative reformers, if they chose to attend in anything like their
full strength, were in a majority, and on the 12th they got up early
and flocked to the House, where, before their bewildered opponents
could rally in force, they immediately voted that Parliament should
resign its powers into the hands of the Lord General. Then, starting
for Whitehall in procession with the Speaker at their head, they
announced to Cromwell the decision they had taken. Their advanced
colleagues kept their seats, but upon attempting to remonstrate were
expelled by a body of soldiers. As in the absence of the Speaker they
could not technically be considered to be a House, those who interfered
were able to aver, without literary untruthfulness, that there had been
no forcible dissolution of Parliament.
In a very short time Cromwell had agreed with the officers on the
constitution to be adopted under the name of _The Instrument of
Government_. The executive power was to reside in a Lord Protector and
Council, the members of which were to be appointed for life, Cromwell
being named as the first Protector. The legislative power was assigned
without restriction to a Parliament elected by constituencies formed,
so far as the counties were concerned, upon a new franchise, the
franchise in the boroughs being left in its old anomalous condition.
This latter concession to prejudice was, however, of less importance,
as a sweeping redistribution of seats, copied with little alteration
from the scheme put forward in _The Agreement of the People_, largely
increased the number of the county members, and disfranchised in
equally large numbers the smaller boroughs which had fallen under the
influence of the country gentlemen. The Parliament thus constituted
was to meet once in three years and to sit at least for five months.
Any Bill passed by this body was to be suspended for twenty days to
give an opportunity for the Protector to explain objections he might
entertain to it. If Parliament refused to listen to his objections,
the Bill became law in spite of him, provided that it contained nothing
contrary to the Instrument itself. The negative voice about which so
much had been heard in the last years of Charles I. was, therefore,
not assigned to the Protector. For all that, the control over the
executive is of greater importance to the development of representative
institutions than legislative independence, and in this respect the
hold of Parliament over the executive was of the flimsiest description,
consisting merely of the right to propose six names whenever there
was a vacancy in the Council, out of which the Council would select
two, and the Protector again make his choice between the two. Even the
financial arrangements, through which Parliaments usually make their
way to power, were settled in such a way as to debar the elected House
from obtaining even indirect control. It is true that the Instrument
started with the sweeping generalisation that 'no tax, charge, or
imposition' was to be 'laid upon the people but by common consent in
Parliament,' but this statement was followed by a clause assigning
to the Protector £200,000 for civil expenses, besides as much as was
needed for keeping up the navy, as well as an army of 30,000 men, and
this sum, to which no definite limits were placed, was to be raised
out of the customs 'and such other ways and means as shall be agreed
upon by the Protector and Council'. As to the army and navy thus
secured, the Protector was to dispose and order them with the consent
of Parliament during its short session, but during all the rest of the
three years with the consent of the Council only. It would, however, be
a mistake to say that the Instrument established absolute government
in England. The Protector was bound to act under the control of the
Council, and though scarcely any record of the political action of
that body has been preserved, there is enough to show that whilst
Cromwell's personal influence over it was necessarily great, it was
by no means a mere tool in his hands. The constitutional control to
which the Protector was subjected was therefore a real one, though that
control was in the hands of a body meeting in secret and sufficiently
self-centred to make no bid for popularity by the speeches made in
the course of discussions amongst its members, as a more popular
assembly would have done. Finally, religious liberty was secured for
all congregations which did not admit 'Popery or Prelacy'; whilst the
right of issuing ordinances with the force of law was granted to the
Protector and Council till the first Parliament met.
It has frequently been urged that the Instrument was the earliest
example of that system of fixed constitutions, of which the most
notable instance is that of the United States, and must therefore rank
with such constitutions rather than with the system of Parliamentary
supremacy which was ultimately adopted in England. The comparison
with the American constitution, however, can only stand with those
who are resolved to fix their attention on similarities and to ignore
differences. The Instrument, it is true, resembles the Constitution
of the United States in refusing to submit the holders of executive
authority to the constant control of the legislature, and in setting
forth the relations between the bodies of the State in a written
document. On more important points there is a world-wide distinction.
In America, the whole federal constitution is redolent of popular
control. Every four years the President is re-elected or replaced,
and though Congress cannot dismiss a President except by a judicial
impeachment, it has complete control over the finances, and can leave
him without supply. Add to this the ingrained habit of the American
people in giving vent to popular opinion, and in pressing it on the
notice of the government which it has given to itself, and we shall
find little cause to seek in the Constitution of the United States for
a justification of the Instrument--a document drawn up by soldiers and
endowing the chief of the State and his councillors with a lifelong
tenure of office, with an abundant armed force, and with a power of
taxation adequate to all ordinary requirements in time of peace. The
question raised by the Instrument was not whether the national control
was to be exercised indirectly through Parliament, or directly
through a popular vote, but whether it should be exercised at all.
The constitutional principles alike respected in England and America
are diametrically opposed to those on which the government of the
Protectorate was founded.
On December 16, 1653, Oliver was installed at Westminster as Lord
Protector under the conditions of the Instrument. His Council
consisted of seven officers and eight civilians, the most notable
of the latter being Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper--better known by the
title long afterwards conferred on him by Charles II. as the Earl of
Shaftesbury--who had been an active member of the Councils formed after
the break-up of the Long Parliament. Little as is known of his actions
during this period of his life, his rallying to the Protectorate
can only be explained as the result of the conviction that Oliver
was in earnest in his intention of giving to the new government a
preponderatingly civilian character, and of keeping it out of the hands
of fanatics on one hand, and of soldiers on the other. In Thurloe, who
had acted as Secretary to the Council since the spring of 1652, the
Protector acquired an official whose ability was beyond dispute, who
was appalled by no labours, and one who, with the aid of the network of
spies whose poverty he utilised, was keen-sighted in penetrating the
secrets of conspirators at home and abroad.
The Protectorate was at least placed beyond immediate danger by the
adhesion of the army and the fleet. Scarcely less important was the
concurrence of the judges, amongst them that honourable man and eminent
lawyer Matthew Hale, who had won Oliver's approbation by his services
in the cause of law-reform. Hale, indeed, informed the Protector that
as he was personally desirous of seeing a Royalist restoration, he
could only remain on the bench on the condition that he should be
excused from taking part in the trials of political prisoners. Oliver
at once gave the required promise. The compromise was creditable to
both the parties concerned.
The Protector, by his assumption of the government, had roused up
enemies enough to make him chary of dispensing with the support of so
valuable a helper. To the Royalists, who hoped to strike at a single
person more easily than at a Parliament, were added the Fifth Monarchy
preachers, who held that Oliver was 'the vile person to whom they
shall not give the honour of the kingdom,' but who should 'come in
peaceably and obtain the kingdom by flatteries,' as foretold by the
Prophet Daniel. They were the more dangerous as they were known to
have supporters in the army, especially as Harrison, who shared their
opinions, had been thought of by the advanced members of the nominated
Parliament as a possible substitute for Oliver in the command. The
first repressive action of the Protectorate was therefore to place
two of the most turbulent of the preachers under lock and key, and to
deprive Harrison of his commission. Such men were only really dangerous
by their hold on a portion of the army, whilst the Commonwealth's men,
such as Bradshaw and Vane, though not in the least likely to head an
armed resistance, were strong in the conviction which they shared with
a considerable number of their countrymen, that the only possibility
of defence against the evils of military rule was to be found in a
recurrence to legality. It is true that with them legality consisted
in the restoration of a sovereign Parliament, whilst the Royalists saw
it in the restoration of the King, but if ever time and circumstances
should fuse the two ideas together, a body of opinion would be created
which would try to the uttermost the fabric of a government raised on
other principles.
Oliver's task was necessarily conditioned by the nature of the
opposition he had to encounter. His new system, if it were to have
a chance of becoming permanent, would have to commend itself to
that large majority of men who follow no ideals, but are content to
live under any rule, whatever may have been its origin, if only the
rulers confer upon them a reasonable amount of protection, and are
sufficiently in sympathy with the governed to be regarded with love
rather than with fear. It was this quality that had mainly helped
Elizabeth to make a doubtful legal position a step in her triumphant
career, and it was to Elizabeth alone amongst recent English sovereigns
that Oliver looked with respect and admiration. Nor was he deficient
in many of the characteristics which had made Elizabeth great. He
had the same patriotism, the same skill in the selection of agents,
the same impatience of partisan bitterness in Church and State, the
same readiness to trust in the healing virtues of time. The chief
obstacles in the way of a repetition of Elizabeth's success lay, not
merely in the stain of the king's blood upon his hands, but also in his
leadership of an army of which the officers shaped their conduct in
accordance with distinct religious and political ideas. He had risen
to power by the sympathy of these men. Was it possible to secure the
sympathy of the nation without alienating the army to the support of
which he must look till he could place his authority on a wider basis?
In the first and easiest portion of the task before the Protector,
the redress of grievances weighing upon the people, there was no
hesitation. The Instrument had conferred upon Oliver and his Council
the right of issuing ordinances with the force of law up to the meeting
of Parliament; and in little more than eight months no fewer than
eighty-two of these ordinances had been issued subject to amendment,
if Parliament chose to interfere. The Council was, in fact, like the
Cabinet of to-day, far more capable of initiating legislation than a
Parliament consisting of several hundred members, and that so little
criticism attended these ordinances may be taken as satisfactory
evidence that there was good reason for that strengthening of the
government which had been the main argument of the founders of the new
constitution. The ordinance for the reform of Chancery was certainly
exposed to the conservative objections of the lawyers and was, no
doubt, susceptible of improvement, but it aimed at the removal of
acknowledged abuses, especially at accelerating the movements of a
Court whose long delays had caused that wide-spread irritation which
had given support even to the exaggerated proposals of the nominated
Parliament.
Still more important was the adoption of the new scheme of Church
government. The minister presented to a living was required to have
a certificate of fitness from three persons of known godliness and
integrity, one of them being a settled minister; afterwards he was to
hand this certificate to certain commissioners known as Triers and to
obtain their testimony that he was 'a person for the grace of God in
him, his holy and unblamable conversation, as also for his knowledge
and utterance, able and fit to preach the gospel'. Having become an
incumbent, he was liable to expulsion by a local body of Ejectors for
immorality or for holding blasphemous or atheistical opinions. As
long as he was maintained in his post, he might uphold any Puritan
system he pleased and organise his congregation on the Presbyterian,
Independent, or Baptist system, if he could persuade them to follow
him. Those persons, whether lay or clerical, who objected to the
system upheld in their parish church, were at liberty to form separate
congregations--gathered Churches, as they were called--at their own
discretion. Later on, towards the close of 1655, Oliver's tolerant
spirit gave way to the return of the Jews, who had been exiled from
England since the reign of Edward I. A few Unitarians were no doubt
excluded from the benefits of his toleration. Moreover, the Society of
Friends, now rising into importance under the leadership of George Fox,
was also threatened with exclusion as presumably guilty of blasphemy,
though the Protector himself not infrequently interfered on behalf of
its members. Even if this had been otherwise, the Society put in no
claim for participation in a legal support or even for acknowledgment
by the State.
That the Church thus constituted was but a Puritan Church is the
charge commonly brought against the system of the Protectorate. That
it was so is certainly not to be denied, but, after all, it must be
remembered that, so far as opposition to Puritanism was based on
definite religious grounds, and not merely on moral slackness, it was
confined to a comparatively small number of Englishmen. Before the
days of Laud, the clergy of the Church had been for the most part, so
far as their teaching was concerned, Puritan in their ideas, and lax
in their ceremonial observances, and thus the ecclesiastical changes
initiated by the Long Parliament had been received by the bulk of the
laity rather as the removal of innovations than as the establishment of
something entirely new. The honour in which episcopacy and the Prayer
Book were now held was mainly confined to the Royalist gentry and to
scholars expelled from the Universities, and was therefore understood
to be closely connected with political aims. Even so, there was no
attempt as yet on the part of the Government to suppress the use of the
Prayer Book in private houses, and there is reason to suppose that if
no political disturbances had followed, no such attempt would have been
made at a later time. The system of the Protectorate was undoubtedly
the most tolerant yet known in England--more tolerant, indeed, than
public opinion would, if left to itself, have sanctioned.
Not only by its legal reforms did the Protectorate strive to commend
itself to the nation. Oliver had never thrown his heart into the Dutch
war, and a little before he dissolved the Long Parliament, a great
English victory in a battle which began off Portland and ended under
Cape Grisnez, had secured the mastery over the Channel to the English
fleet. That fleet rallied to the new Government; even Blake, who was
hostile at first, accepting the result of political changes, and
finally throwing in his lot with the Protectorate, on the ground that
it was the business of the navy to leave politics alone, and--though
the expression is not traceable on sufficient evidence to Blake's
lips--'to keep foreigners from fooling us'. The wound that Blake
received off Portland incapacitated him from taking a considerable
part in the later battles of the war, the burden lying for the most
part on Monk, who won victories off the Gabbard in June and off the
Texel in July, not long after the nominated Parliament had entered on
its unlucky career. In the latter conflict, Tromp, the great Dutch
admiral whose ill success was due not to any failure of his powers or
to any want of manliness in his crews, but to the inefficiency of the
Government he served, was killed by a shot as he was entering into the
battle. Even whilst the nominated Parliament was still in session, a
negotiation with the Dutch had been opened, and this negotiation, which
was countenanced by Oliver from the first and carried on earnestly by
him as Protector, ended in a peace signed on April 5, 1654.
Those who wish to estimate the value of Oliver's foreign policy and
its bearing upon the fortunes of the government he hoped to establish
will do well to study at length the story of his negotiation with
the Dutch, and of his contemporary excursions into the domain of
Continental affairs. It is beyond doubt that he was desirous of peace
with the Dutch on the ground that they were Protestants, and that
he was also desirous of allying himself with other Protestant States
for the protection of Protestants under persecution by Roman Catholic
Governments. Yet, not only did this fail to hinder him from exacting
hard terms from the Dutch, but the motive of his diplomacy is revealed
in his eagerness to make an agreement with his actual enemies a step
to immediate hostilities with other nations. At one time he proposed
a plan for the partition between England and the Netherlands of so
much of the globe as lies outside Europe whilst he was at the same
time negotiating with the Governments of France and Spain, offering to
make common cause with one or the other in the war then raging between
them. No doubt some religious element could be imported into either
quarrel. To help Spain against France, at least in the way he proposed,
was to vindicate the French Protestants against a persecution to which
they were to some extent exposed, in spite of the acceptance by their
Government of the Edict of Nantes. To assist France against Spain was
to weaken the most bigoted Roman Catholic Government in existence.
What we are here concerned with, however, is not the details of
Oliver's foreign policy, but its conception as a whole. It is true
that the existing position of affairs in Europe,--in which France and
Spain were neutralising the forces of one another--was almost an
invitation to the strong military and naval power of the Protectorate
to extend its influence at the expense of one or other of the rivals;
but, so far as this consideration may have played its part in
bringing Oliver to a decision, it has left no traces in his recorded
words. Obviously, when he undertook the negotiation with the Dutch,
he had two courses before him, either to lay the foundations of a
general peace, or to leave himself free to push military and naval
enterprises in other directions. It was the latter course on which he
resolved--a course which has gained him the admiration of a posterity
prompt to recognise in Oliver the ruler who, having received from the
Commonwealth an excellently organised army and navy, was the first
to apply those potent instruments of conquest to the acquisition
of over-sea dominion. What posterity has failed to observe is that
this design was incompatible with his other design of settling the
government of England on a constitutional basis. By his resolve to
seek military employment for the magnificent force that he had welded
together, and to find reasons for going to war with some nation or
other, rather than be driven into war by the necessity of upholding
the honour and interests of the country, Oliver was compelled to keep
up a military and naval establishment which may not have been in
excess of the taxable capacity of the nation; but which at all events
imposed a burden much heavier than that to which Englishmen had been
accustomed to submit. Before Parliament met, after many hesitations he
had resolved to send out one fleet under Blake into the Mediterranean
to enforce the release of English prisoners taken by the pirates of the
Barbary coast, and another fleet under Penn to seize upon Hispaniola or
some other West Indian island as a response to the refusal of Spain to
allow English merchantmen to trade even with English colonies in the
West Indies, as well as to various acts of violence already committed
by Spanish officials in American waters.
That in both these cases Oliver was justified in seeking redress can
hardly be denied. As regards Spain, he had already made a twofold
demand on Cardenas, the Spanish ambassador, first, for liberty of trade
in the Indies--not necessarily, so far as our information goes, for
liberty of trade with Spanish possessions--and, secondly, for entire
liberty of religion for English merchants and sailors in their own
houses on Spanish soil and in their ships in Spanish ports--he not
being satisfied with the offer of Spain to renew the stipulations of
the treaty signed by Charles I., in which the Inquisition was debarred
from acting against English Protestants so long as they created
no scandal. Both demands were promptly rejected. "It is," replied
Cardenas, "to ask my master's two eyes." Oliver's notion that he could
attack a Spanish colony in the West Indies and yet remain at peace
with Spain can only be explained by his admiration for Elizabethan
methods, which led him to suppose that the existing Spanish Government
would be as ready as that of Philip II. to put up with a system which
kept peace in Europe whilst war was being waged in America. It is not,
however, with problems of international morality that we are at present
concerned. Before Blake could sail for the Mediterranean or Penn for
the West Indies, Parliament would meet, and would be confronted with
the fact that, in addition to his fleets, the Protector had on foot a
land force of 57,000 men, a number exceeding by no less than 27,000
the 30,000 which the Instrument itself had laid down as the normal
strength of the army. It is true that he could hardly have met his
engagements with a smaller force. Ireland was only recently subdued;
an insurrection against the English conquerors--known as Glencairn's
rising--was in full swing in Scotland; the dread of a Royalist movement
in England required the maintenance of more troops than would be
needed in quieter times, whilst other regiments were already preparing
for embarkation in the West Indian fleet. On the other hand, when
it is remembered that it was through his command of the services of
these soldiers that Oliver had been raised to power, that he could
still count on their support to maintain him in it, and that he was
calling upon the nation to bear the burden of enterprises which he had
originated without asking its consent, can it be matter of wonder that
at such a time there should be some effort on the part of a Parliament
which had come to look upon itself as representing the nation to
impose limits upon the burdens which had already far outgrown even the
prescriptions of the Instrument itself?
The elections to the first Protectorate Parliament were held under
peculiar conditions. In the boroughs still permitted to return
members the old conditions existed, but in the counties to which a
redistribution of seats had transferred the electoral power, hitherto
possessed by small villages under the influence of the neighbouring
landowners, the Instrument had established a uniform franchise of the
ownership of real or personal property worth £200. So far as we can
trace any direct issue before the constituencies, the elections turned
on the approval or renunciation of the policy of the advanced party in
the nominated Parliament, and on this the electorate gave no uncertain
sound. That party was practically swept away, and a full approbation
thereby accorded to the conservative policy which had been the main
strength of the appeal made to the country by the new government. It
did not follow that the new constitution would meet with the same
approbation. A not inconsiderable number of the Commonwealth men, such
as Bradshaw and Hazlerigg, sore at their expulsion from the benches of
the Long Parliament, had been returned, together with a goodly company
of political Presbyterians, who might be expected to do their best to
free Parliament from the shackles of the Instrument.
Under these circumstances, Oliver's speech at the opening of Parliament
was a masterpiece of skill. Dwelling on the points on which he and the
majority of his hearers were in agreement, he kept out of sight those
on which differences might arise. He called for healing and settlement,
for orderly government which might replace the confusions of the past
and stem the tide of fanaticism in the present. He dwelt not on the
extent of the liberty of conscience proclaimed in the Instrument,
but on the restrictions imposed in that document, especially on such
teachers as 'under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practise
licentiousness'. He held up for acceptance the doctrine that, when
such a result was to be feared, it was the duty of the magistrate to
intervene. He protested against the notion that it was antichristian
for a minister to receive ordination, and also against the notion
that the Fifth Monarchy was about to commence, and that it was 'for
men, on this principle, to betitle themselves that they are the only
men to rule kingdoms, govern nations, and give laws to people, and
determine of property and liberty and everything else'. Then came
Oliver's appeal for support on the grounds of the difficulties he had
inherited from his predecessors--troubles in Ireland and Scotland,
trade with Portugal and France interrupted, as well as a war with the
Dutch; after which he set forth the benefits of the Instrument, the
legal and ecclesiastical reforms it had rendered possible, the peace
with the Dutch, and the commercial treaties concluded with Sweden and
Denmark. Finally came a hint that Parliament might well be liberal
with its supplies, as in spite of the enormous burdens weighing upon
it, the Government had diminished, by no less than £30,000 a month,
the assessment tax by which army and navy were in part supported.
It has often been doubted whether Oliver had in him the making of a
Parliamentary tactician. Those who reply in the affirmative may point
to this speech in defence of their opinion, especially if we accept the
evidence of the Dutch ambassadors that Oliver--in words subsequently
omitted from the published speech--concluded by a direct invitation to
the House to take into consideration the Instrument, no doubt expecting
its easy acceptance by men who were as desirous of order as himself.
Confirmatory of this conclusion is the fact that when the Parliamentary
debates opened and the question was asked whether the House was
prepared to leave the government under the control of a single man,
it was a member of the Council who demanded that all other business
should be laid aside till the Instrument had been submitted to the
approval of the House.
When this demand had been complied with, it became evident that the
majority of the members were in favour of imposing further restrictions
on the Protector which would make him no more than a tool in the hands
of Parliament. Such a position Oliver absolutely declined to accept,
and on its being known that Harrison had been seeking the advantage
of his own party by stirring up confusion at Westminster, and had
boasted that he would have 20,000 men at his back, he struck firmly and
sharply. Harrison was sent for under guard, and Parliament was ordered
to attend the Protector in the Painted Chamber.
The speech which the Protector delivered to the members may rank as
the ablest which is known to have fallen from his lips. There can be
no doubt that he would personally have preferred the retention of the
Instrument as it stood, but he was aware of the objections taken to
it, and all that we know leads us to believe that those objections
were shared by members of his own Council. At all events, after a
justification of his own conduct in relation to the preparation of the
Instrument, and an argument that it had been accepted by the electors
who had been bound by its terms to acknowledge the settlement of the
Government in a single person and Parliament, he proceeded to offer
a compromise. He was prepared to substitute for the Instrument a
Parliamentary constitution, provided that four conditions were admitted
as fundamentals to be handed down to posterity as unassailable. The
first was that the country was to be governed by a single person and a
Parliament; the second, that Parliaments were not to make themselves
perpetual; the third, that liberty of conscience should be respected;
the fourth, that neither Protector nor Parliament should have absolute
power over the militia. It speaks volumes for Oliver's power of
seeing into the heart of a situation, that whilst the Instrument of
Government, and the absolute supremacy of a single House with power
to defy dissolution, have alike passed into the realms of unrealised
theory, every one of Oliver's fundamentals has been adopted by the
nation--not indeed in any written constitution, but with the stronger
and more enduring guarantee of a practice accepted beyond dispute by
the conscience of the people itself. The four fundamentals on behalf
of which he now appealed to the House formed the political legacy
bequeathed by him to posterity.
To obtain acquiescence in this compromise, Oliver directed that
no member should take his seat who refused to sign the following
declaration: "I do hereby freely promise and engage to be true and
faithful to the Lord Protector and the Commonwealth of England,
Scotland and Ireland, and shall not, according to the tenor of the
indentures whereby I am returned to serve in this present Parliament,
propose or give my consent to alter the Government as it is settled
in one person and a Parliament". Those who refused subscription were
excluded from all participation in the business of the House.
The imposition of such restriction was doubtless condemnable on the
principle that the will of the electorate expressed through its
representatives must be taken as final in all disputes. Neither
Cromwell, however, nor his opponents had recognised such a principle.
Vane and Bradshaw had been ready to exclude Royalists, and other
unfit persons, whilst the authors of the Instrument had imposed
qualifications with a very similar object. If a test there was to be,
the one now selected was not only the lightest possible, but it was
one that had already been signed by each constituency on behalf of
its members, without which formality they were not, according to the
Instrument, entitled to take their seats. It left them perfectly at
liberty to propose any amendment of the constitution, even to vote
against any one of Oliver's fundamentals with the exception of the
first.
It is impossible here to enter into details of the constitutional
debates which followed. It is sufficient to say that the basis which
Parliament proposed to substitute for the Instrument was the revival
of the negative voice, so that no constitutional innovation could be
made without the Protector's consent. Of the four fundamentals, the
first two--the one relating to the position of the single person and
the other refusing to Parliament the right of perpetuating itself--were
accepted without opposition. The other two raised greater difficulties.
The House was very far from being anxious to extend religious liberty
as widely as the Protector desired, but it ultimately agreed to a
form of words which practically left the decision in his hands. The
absolutely insurmountable difficulty was found in the disposal of
the army. In the first place, Parliament held out for the diminution
of the numbers of the regular forces to the 30,000 men allowed by
the Instrument, and required that if more were needed they should be
raised in the form of a militia which would fall more readily under
the influence of the local gentry. In the second place, the House
resolved to limit its grant of supply to the taxation required for the
maintenance of the army for a term of five years only, thus reserving
to itself the ultimate financial control which spells sovereignty.
Cromwell's whole soul recoiled from the acceptance of a scheme which
would render nugatory the proposed constitutional restrictions of
Parliamentary omnipotence, by enabling Parliament, at the end of the
assigned term, to stop the supplies without which the army could not
be maintained; unless indeed, when that term reached its end, the
Protector chose to employ his army to crush the Parliament of 1659
as he had employed it to crush the Parliament of 1653. Parliamentary
supremacy or military despotism were the alternatives which Oliver or
his successor would have to face in the not very distant future.
If two men ride on one horse, one of them must ride in front, and this
sober physical truth is equally applicable to the realm of politics. No
paper constitution, however deserving of veneration, can prevent there
being some force in every nation capable of making itself supreme if
it chooses to do so. It may be the constituencies, as in England at
the end of the nineteenth century; the people consulted in mass, as
in the United States; or the army, as in England in the middle of the
seventeenth century. Such supremacy may be subjected to the checks of
written or unwritten constitutions, and may be thus thrust into the
background till called forth by some special crisis; but in the long
run it is impossible to prevent supreme power from exerting itself. The
defect of Oliver's fourth fundamental was that it sought to divide the
control of the army, or, in other words, Sovereignty, between Protector
and Parliament, at a time when the Protector was powerless to act in
defiance of the army. It is useless to deny that he was perfectly in
the right in hesitating to hand over supreme power to a Parliament
uncontrolled by the nation, and capable of using its financial
authority to demolish any system of government that might stand in
the way of the ambitions of its members. It is equally undeniable
that, as he was unable to depend on the nation as a whole, he had
nothing to fall back upon except a Protectorate which, in reality,
was controlled by the will of the leading officers, who found in the
provisions of the Instrument which they had themselves originated the
means of perpetuating their own power by securing--irrespective of the
concurrence of Parliament or nation--the levy of taxes, the amount of
which was fixed by the Protector and Council alone.
Oliver having once made up his mind to refuse his consent to the new
constitution, was anxious to hasten the dissolution of the Parliament.
The Instrument having provided that the House should sit for five
months, he opportunely remembered that the months by which the army's
pay was regulated were lunar months; and on January 22, 1655, when five
lunar months were expired, he pronounced its dissolution. The speech
in which he announced his determination was stamped with vexation of
spirit at the failure of his hopes, a vexation in itself by no means
unjustifiable. The tragedy of the situation lay in the undoubted fact
that however much they might differ on the means to be pursued, the
end at which Protector and Parliament aimed was identical, namely,
the conversion of the military into the civil state. Parliament had
counted it well done to leave Oliver in possession for five years,
whilst Oliver, conscious of his own rectitude of purpose, and ignoring
the consideration that at the end of five years he might no longer be
living, and that the Protectorate might have passed by demise into
less worthy hands, complained that he was not trusted. Why, he asked,
had they not come to him to talk the matter over? Why indeed, except
that Parliaments have their pride as well as Protectors, and that
this one had come to the conclusion that it was its duty to settle
the constitution rather than to accept a settlement from a knot of
soldiers. If it did not seek an opportunity to discuss such grave
questions with Oliver in person, at least it had had the advantage of
listening to what might be presumed to be his views when promulgated by
those members of his Council who were also members of the House.
In an elaborate defence of the Instrument, Oliver put his finger on
the real ground of offence. "Although," he declared in speaking of the
rights of the Protector, "for the present the keeping up and having in
his power the militia seems the most hard, yet, if it should be yielded
up at such a time as this when there is as much need to keep this cause
by it--which is evidently at this time impugned by all the enemies of
it--as there was to get it, what would become of all? Or if it should
not be equally placed in him and the Parliament, but yielded up at
any time, it determines the Power," _i.e._, hinders the exercise of
authority by the person in possession of power, "either from doing the
good he ought, or hindering Parliaments from perpetuating themselves,
or from imposing what religion they please on the consciences of men,
or what government they please upon the nation; thereby subjecting
us to dis-settlement in every Parliament, and to the desperate
consequences thereof: and if the nation shall happen to fall into a
blessed peace, how easily and certainly will their charge be taken off,
and their forces disbanded; and then, where will the danger be to have
the militia thus stated?"
It was impossible for the Protector to put his case more convincingly.
Yet, admirable as a criticism pointing out the danger likely to follow
on the adoption of the proposals of Parliament, Oliver's reasoning
pre-supposed the acceptance by Parliament of his own conviction that an
armed minority had the right to impose its principles on the unarmed
majority--the very belief which the authors of the Parliamentary
constitution were most determined to resist. Even if it had been
possible for any Puritan party to look for a solution of the problem
in an appeal to the unfettered judgment of the nation, it is evident
that Oliver would never have agreed to such an arbitration. On the one
side was the resolve to get what appeared to be the right thing done,
if necessary by force. On the other side was the resolve to eliminate
the element of force by subordinating it to the rule of Parliaments.
For the moment the decisive word rested with Oliver. "I think myself
bound," he said in conclusion, "as in my duty to God, and to the
people of these nations, for their safety and good in every respect--I
think it my duty to tell you that it is not for the profit of these
nations, nor for common and public good for you to continue longer, and
therefore I do declare unto you, that I do dissolve this Parliament."
History has pronounced in favour of the view taken by Oliver's
antagonists. The reliance on military power in which he had found his
refuge did more than all other facts put together to establish, for
good or for evil, a reliance on Parliament. It is the special mark
of his greatness that he put his whole heart after the dissolution
of his first Parliament into an effort to avoid the appearance even
of a temporary dictatorship. He shrank from being a military ruler,
even under the plea of the necessity of the times. His holding back
the dissolution of Parliament till the fifth month--lunar month as it
was--had been accomplished, offers the key-note of the position as
he judged it. The Parliamentary constitution had perished stillborn.
The constitution of the Instrument was in full force, and was to be
observed, even though it were to his own detriment. The Instrument
enabled the Protector and Council to levy such taxation as they thought
fit for 30,000 men and for a navy sufficient for defence, whilst he had
now on foot some 57,000 soldiers, and, in addition to the home fleet,
two others had already been despatched--the one to the Mediterranean,
the other to the West Indies. Yet the Protector was able to announce
that he would content himself with levying the Assessment money at
the low amount of £80,000 a month on the three nations, an amount
which the dissolved Parliament had fixed as sufficient for the forces
named in the Instrument. Such a decision left the Government with
enormous forces--as forces were in those days reckoned--which it had
no visible means of paying; but it was an announcement in the most
practical form, that, as soon as the existing situation would admit,
the military expenditure should be brought down to the requirements
of the Instrument. The announcement was accompanied by a proclamation
setting forth the principles on which the Protector had decided to act
on the thorny question of religious liberty. There was to be complete
freedom for all who contented themselves with setting forth their
opinions, without 'imposing' on the conscience of others or disturbing
their worship. The last clause, which was aimed at the new Society of
Friends, commonly styled Quakers by the irreverent multitude, sought to
put a stop to their practice of carrying on their polemics in churches
where congregations were assembled. To the exhortations of George Fox
himself the Protector listened with respect. "Come again to my house,"
said Oliver, "for if thou and I were but an hour a day together, we
should be nearer one to the other. I wish you no more ill than I do to
my own soul." A reverence for genuineness, in whatever shape, was not
the least admirable of Oliver's characteristics.
The clause against 'imposing' was more widely sweeping in its aims. It
struck at the claims of the Roman Papacy, and the English episcopacy,
as well as at the designs of the late Parliament to establish lists
of opinions to which toleration should be refused. It struck also at
all attempts to snatch at political power with the object of serving
religious ends. Oliver's breach with Parliament had roused attacks from
every quarter. There were the Fifth Monarchy men who rejected every
form of secular government and whose leaders were not to be silenced
except by placing them under guard. Harrison himself had to be placed
under arrest. It was not work that Oliver would have chosen. "I know,"
wrote Thurloe, "it is a trouble to my Lord Protector to have any one
that is a saint in truth to be grieved or dissatisfied with him." The
Cavaliers might be regarded as hereditary enemies. In the last summer
a Cavalier plot to assassinate the Protector had been discovered,
and two of the plotters, Gerard and Vowel, had been executed. Whilst
Parliament was still in session, Thurloe's spies--who were to be found
in every land in which their services were required--brought him news
of a projected insurrection, and it had been one of Oliver's charges
against the members, that their delay in settling the Government had
fostered the plot. In March futile attempts to rise were made in
various parts of the country, the only one which gained the dignity
of an actual insurrection being that in which Penruddock and others
gathered in arms at Salisbury, seized the judges of assize in their
beds and marched off in the hope of rallying the scattered Royalists
of the west. The insurgents, however, were dispersed in Devonshire,
where many of them were captured. In the end a few of the ringleaders
were tried and executed, whilst a large number of their adherents were
transported without legal trial to Barbados. Such procedure, whether it
be counted as an evasion or as a breach of the law, was evidence of the
difficulty which Oliver would increasingly feel in meeting his enemies
otherwise than by the exertion of arbitrary power.
A more difficult question arose when two judges sent to try Royalist
prisoners in the north doubted their competency, on the ground that
an ordinance defining the offences constituting treason, which the
Protector, in accordance with the Instrument, had issued before
the meeting of Parliament, could not make a rebellion against the
Protectorate to be High Treason. The two judges were at once dismissed,
and soon afterwards Chief Justice Rolle was compelled to resign office
because he was unwilling to enforce the payment of customs upon a
certain Cony; whilst the three lawyers who argued on Cony's behalf--one
of them being Serjeant Maynard, who lived to welcome William III.--that
he was not to pay duties imposed by Protector and Council without the
consent of Parliament, were sent to prison till they had apologised.
One historian after another has accompanied his account of these
proceedings with the observation that there was here a conflict between
law and the tyrant's plea, necessity. There was nothing of the sort.
The question was whether the Instrument was a valid constitution.
If it was, there could be no reasonable doubt that rebels against
the Protectorate were legally traitors, or that customs-duties
applicable to the payment of the army and navy were legally set, not by
Parliament, but by Protector and Council.
If all that Oliver and his councillors had asked of the Instrument
had been to enable them to carry on the government till the lapse of
three years drove them to summon another Parliament, they might have
been well content. They could not, however, forget that they were the
leaders of the party of reform, and the Instrument itself had deprived
them of the power of initiating reforms except through Parliament.
The authority to issue ordinances with the force of law had ceased
with the meeting of Parliament, and all that could now be done was to
urge the Commissioners of the Great Seal to carry out the ordinance
for the reform of Chancery, and, upon their refusal, to replace them
by others likely to be more complacent. The result was a movement in
opposition to the Instrument amongst some of Oliver's partisans, by
which he was hampered as well as assisted. It was natural that such a
movement should also have the character of opposition to the military
party from whom the Instrument had proceeded. Already in the late
Parliament an unsuccessful effort had been made to confer the title of
King on Oliver in the hope that the civilian element in the Government
would be thereby strengthened. In the summer of 1655 a petition was
circulated in the City asking the Protector to assume legislative power
on the invitation of the subscribers. Oliver was far too prudent to
follow such a will-of-the-wisp, and the petition was suppressed by the
Council. The needs that had called it forth could not so easily be
dismissed, especially as the Protector's desire to reform abuses was
strongly reinforced by his need of money--a need which was dramatically
exhibited when the soldiers of his guard broke into his kitchen and
carried off the dinner cooked for his own table, telling him to his
face that as they had not received their pay, they had taken some of it
in kind.
If Oliver was to make both ends meet, it could only be by reductions
in the army, and to effect these he needed the co-operation of the
officers, whilst so far as Scotland and Ireland were concerned,
reductions which might have been dangerous in January had ceased to be
dangerous in July. Monk, who had been sent back to the north as soon
as he could be spared from the Dutch war, had reduced the Highlands to
submission; and Ireland, which had been earlier subjected by English
arms, was now to have imposed on her that thorough-going system
of English colonisation which is usually known as the Cromwellian
settlement, the principles of which had, however, been laid down by
preceding Governments. Those of the landowning class who were unable
to prove, to the satisfaction of English judges, that they had shown
constant good affection to the English Government, even if they had
taken no part against England in the late war--that is to say, the
great bulk of the class which had anything to lose amongst the Irish
Catholics--were driven off into the devastated lands of Connaught,
and their estates were divided amongst English soldiers and other
Englishmen who had lent money for the support of the war upon the
security of confiscated land. Henceforth there was to be in three of
the Irish provinces a class of landed proprietors of English birth
and the Protestant religion surrounded by peasants and labourers who
were divided from them by racial and religious differences of the most
extreme kind. Such an arrangement boded ill for the future peace of
the country. The immediate result was untold misery to the sufferers
and the kindling of hope in English bosoms that at last Ireland would
be peopled by a race loyal to the institutions and religion of her
conquerors.
In any case the scheme for the plantation of Ireland would diminish the
number of soldiers required to hold the country, and before the end
of July the assent of the chiefs of the army in England having been
obtained, the Council also sanctioned not merely a sweeping reduction
in the strength of the regiments in Great Britain, but a diminution of
the amount of the pay both of officers and soldiers. Once more Oliver
had acted in accordance with the Instrument, and with the wishes of
the dissolved Parliament. The £60,000 a month which Parliament had
thought sufficient for the assessment was not exceeded, whilst the army
was reduced at least approximately to the numbers accepted alike by
Parliament and the Instrument. It might be hard to give a satisfactory
answer to those who denied the validity of the Instrument; but, if this
validity were acknowledged, it would be equally hard to refute those
who argued that Oliver was doing his best to rule as a constitutional
magistrate.
Would it be possible for Oliver to persist in this attitude to the
end, in spite of the growing demands on the exchequer? In March, 1655,
Penruddock's rising had extracted from Oliver an order for the calling
out and organisation of the militia, which was, however, countermanded
upon the prompt repression of the insurrection. In May, however, the
officers who recommended the reduction of the army, also recommended
the establishment of a militia for purposes of police, and as the
summer advanced and the information which came in from Thurloe's spies
announced that the Royalist plots were by no means at an end, this plan
assumed greater consistency. The scheme of appointing a militia-police
had at least this to be said in its favour, that the proposal had been
favoured by Parliament. If Parliament had been allowed to work out
its own scheme, it would probably have subjected the militia to local
officers, and provided for its wants by local payments. Oliver took
care to bring it into disciplinary connection with the army, by placing
it under eleven Major-Generals. Taxation for its support he could not
demand without infringing on the Instrument. In his perplexity he, or
one of his advisers, hit upon a plan for raising supplies from the
Royalists alone, who were called on to contribute a tenth of their
income for the purpose. It was their refusal to submit peaceably to
a settled Government which had caused the difficulty, and it was for
them to bear the expense of the measures which had been necessitated
by their misconduct. Such an exaction, being no general taxation,
might be considered by interested parties as saving the authority of
the Instrument. Of any sympathetic feeling with the Royalists whose
property had been diminished by past confiscations, and whose political
and religious ideals had been thrown to the ground, there was, it is
needless to say, nothing in Oliver's mind. They were but enemies to be
crushed, or at least to be reduced to impotence.
That the Royalists had religious ideals of their own was a provocation
which made it easy to deny them the toleration which they had hitherto
virtually enjoyed. The familiar cadences of the Book of Common Prayer
had become to them a symbol of political as well as of religious
faith, whilst the voice of the often long-winded, and sometimes
irrelevant ejaculator of prayers of his own conception, stood for them
as the embodiment of the forces which had conspired to murder their
king, to deprive them of the broad acres sold to satisfy the demands
of sequestrators, and to exclude them from all share in the public
interests of the country which they loved as devotedly as any Puritan
could possibly do. It was now that Oliver committed the mistake--which
thousands of others in like circumstances have committed--of
confounding the symbol with the cause. The use of the Common Prayer
Book was proscribed as thoroughly as the mass. Noblemen and gentlemen
were prohibited from entertaining the ejected clergy of their own
Church as chaplains or tutors of their children. Yet, after all, the
persecution was sharp only for a time, and not only was the inquisition
into the religious practices of domestic life soon abandoned, but the
Episcopalian clergy were led to understand that no harm should befall
them so long as they abstained from thrusting themselves upon the
notice of the public.
It was not only in relation to religious toleration that Oliver was
driven by his position to modify his earlier principles. At one time
he had fully sympathised with the Independent party in its efforts to
secure the liberty of the press. Of libels on his own character and
person he had been widely tolerant. Step by step the Long Parliament
had imposed restrictions on the press, and these restrictions were
continued under the Protectorate. At last, in October 1655, the final
blow fell. Only two weekly newspapers were permitted to appear, and
both these newspapers were to be edited by an agent of the Government.
Milton, now incapacitated by blindness from active employment in the
service of the State, must have winced at hearing that his chosen
hero, who had long ago turned his back on a voluntary system of
Church-government, had now turned his back on the central doctrine of
the Areopagitica. Oliver, we may be sure, took all these proceedings
as a matter of course. He held himself to have been placed in the seat
of authority not to advance the most beneficent theories, but to keep
order after the fashion of a constable in a discordant world. Neither
Milton nor himself believed in the political rights of majorities.
If the nation chose to raise itself up against the cause of God, so
much the worse for the nation. "I say," he had announced to his first
Parliament, "that the wilful throwing away of this government--so owned
by God, so approved by men, so testified to in the fundamentals of
it--and that in relation to the good of these nations and posterity;
I can sooner be willing to be rolled into my grave and buried with
infamy, than I can give my consent unto." Oliver doubtless held that
the partitioning of England into eleven districts, each under a
military chief, was consistent with at least a literal observance of
'this Government,' as he himself had called it.
It is possible that if the Major-Generals had confined themselves to
keeping watch over the Royalist gentry, with occasionally breaking
up their religious meetings, and with driving away the chaplains and
the tutors of their sons, they would have caused less irritation than
they did. The army, however, or in plainer terms, the occupants of
its higher posts, from the Lord Protector downwards, were the most
systematic upholders of that aggressive Puritan morality, which was
diluted with greater worldliness in other circles. It is no doubt
untrue that Justices of the Peace, as has sometimes been suggested,
were altogether inefficient during the Protectorate; but they were not
loved by the Cavalier gentry, whose estates were often larger than
their own; and, like all local authorities, they were hampered by the
local feeling which, even amongst those who willingly accepted the
Protectorate, was, though certainly not Episcopalian, far from being as
acutely Puritan as was desired at head-quarters. A statute inflicting
the penalty of death upon adulterers had been reduced almost to a dead
letter by the unwillingness of juries to convict; and--to take an
instance from the daily amusements of the people--the bear-garden at
Southwark had survived the prohibition of one Puritan Government after
another, till, a few weeks after the appointment of the Major-Generals,
Pride, who had once blocked the doors of Parliament, slew the bears
with his own hands, and closed the exhibition.
As to the Major-Generals themselves, they were soon instructed to
tighten the reins of discipline, co-operating with willing and
spurring unwilling magistrates to suppress not merely treason and
rebellion, but vice and immorality. Their orders were to put down
horse-racing, cock-fighting and other sports which brought together
crowds of doubtful fidelity to the Government. They were told to
promote godliness and virtue, and to see to the execution of the laws
against drunkenness, blasphemy, swearing, play-acting, profanation
of the Lord's Day, and so forth; and also to put down gaming-houses
in Westminster and ale-houses in the country, lest evil and factious
men should congregate in them. They were to keep an open eye on
the beneficed clergy, calling for the ejection of those who either
showed tendencies favourable to the Book of Common Prayer, or brought
disgrace by laxity of conduct on the Puritanism they professed. During
the first six or nine months of 1656, when these men ruled supreme,
the anti-Puritan fervour which was before long to lay low both the
Protectorate and the Commonwealth, ceased to be the special note of
particular classes and rooted itself in general society, far outside
the circle of ordinary royalism.