CROMWELL AND HIS PARLIAMENTS
From 1654 to 1658, the fundamental question of English politics was,
whether Cromwell would succeed in securing the assent of the nation to
the authority which the army had conferred upon him. Foreigners saw the
situation clearly. After the famous Swedish chancellor, Oxenstiern, had
heard Whitelocke’s account of the foundation of the Protectorate, he
told him there was but one thing remaining for the Protector to do and
that was “to get him a back and breast of steel.” “What do you mean?”
asked Whitelocke. “I mean,” replied the Chancellor, “the confirmation of
his being Protector by your Parliament, which will be his best and
greatest strength.” Cromwell himself was not content to remain the
nominee of the soldiers, and wished to govern by consent and not by
force. But two great obstacles stood always in his way. One was the
rooted aversion of Englishmen to the rule of the sword, which was the
origin of his power. The other was the traditions of the House of
Commons. In January, 1649, it had claimed to be the supreme power in the
state in the right of the sovereign people it represented, and that
claim, once made, could never be forgotten. To one section of the
Republicans, the only legitimate Government was the expelled Long
Parliament, granted by statute the right never to be dissolved but by
its own consent. To another section, any elected Parliament was as
all-powerful as the people from which its rights were derived. To admit
the right of any external power to limit the authority of Parliament,
seemed to both a betrayal of the liberty of the nation.
The first Parliament elected under the provisions of the Instrument of
Government met in September, 1654. The majority of its members were
Presbyterians or moderate Independents, for the extreme men of the
Little Parliament had been rejected at the polls. It soon became evident
that while the House was prepared to accept Cromwell as head of the
state, it was not willing to accept the constitution which the officers
had devised. Instead of contenting itself with the functions of a
legislature, it claimed to be a constituent assembly. The Protector
might exercise the executive power, provided the representatives of the
people settled the terms upon which he held it. “The government,” ran
the formula adopted, “should be in the Parliament and a single person
limited or restrained as the Parliament should think fit.” The
co-ordinate and independent power which the Instrument of Government
gave the Protector was thus called in question, and Parliament once more
laid claim to sovereignty.
Cromwell thought it necessary to intervene to maintain his own authority
and that of the constitution. He offered a compromise. Parliament might
revise the constitution if its essentials were left untouched.
“Circumstantials” they might alter; “fundamentals” they must accept.
Those fundamentals he summed up in four principles: government by a
single person and Parliament; the division of the control of the
military forces between Parliament and the Protector; limitation of the
length of time which a Parliament might sit; and, finally, liberty of
conscience. As for himself, Cromwell asserted that his title to rule had
been ratified by the nation. The army, the City, most of the boroughs
and counties of England had by their addresses signified their approval.
The judges by taking out new commissions had accepted his authority. The
sheriffs by proceeding to elections in accordance with his writs, and
the members themselves chosen in those elections, had thereby owned it
too. Either directly or indirectly therefore his power was founded on
the acceptance and consent of the people. For the good of these nations
and their posterity he would maintain the present settlement against all
opposition. “The wilful throwing away of this Government, so owned by
God, so approved by men,—I can sooner be willing to be rolled into my
grave and buried with infamy, than I can give my consent unto.”
About a hundred members were excluded from the House for refusing to
sign an engagement to be faithful to the Commonwealth and the Protector,
and not to alter the government as settled in a single person and
Parliament. The rest, accepting the Protector’s invitation, proceeded to
revise the constitution. Many days they spent in these debates, wasting
much time in futile disputes about words, but making some judicious
amendments. They made the office of Protector elective, and the Council
more dependent upon Parliament. On the other hand, they restricted the
Protector’s veto over legislation, and sought to limit the toleration
granted by the constitution. A list of damnable heresies was to be drawn
up, and twenty articles of faith were to be enumerated, which no man was
to be permitted to controvert. At this both the army and the Protector
took alarm, and Cromwell was petitioned by the officers to intervene. In
the end, it was agreed that the question of heresy should be left to the
joint decision of Protector and Parliament, but another question
remained behind, on which no compromise was possible. By the
“Instrument,” the Protector was empowered to maintain a standing army of
thirty thousand men, but at the close of 1654, the forces actually on
foot in the three nations amounted to fifty-seven thousand. The annual
expenditure of the state had risen to £2,670,000, while the revenue
amounted only to two millions and a quarter. Parliament was eager to
reduce taxation, and above all to reduce the cost of the army, which
amounted to £1,560,000 per annum. It demanded the reduction of the army
to the legal maximum, voted after much discussion a revenue of one
million three hundred thousand pounds, which it held to be sufficient to
maintain an army of thirty thousand, and promised to provide money to
pay off the twenty-seven thousand men to be disbanded. At the same time,
it insisted that the control of the military forces of the nation should
belong to Parliament, not to the Protector. On this question Oliver
could not yield. In his opinion and in the opinion of his Council,
thirty thousand men were not sufficient to keep the three nations in
peace.
The royalist rising in Scotland was only just put down, and Ireland,
though subdued, was seething with discontent. In England, preparations
for an insurrection were in progress, encouraged by the disputes between
Parliament and the Protector. “Dissettlement and division, discontent
and dissatisfaction,” he said, “together with real dangers to the whole,
have been more multiplied within these five months of your sitting than
in some years before. Foundations have been laid for the future renewing
of the troubles of these nations by all the enemies of them abroad and
at home.”
The Cavaliers, said Cromwell, had been for some time furnishing
themselves with arms; “nothing doubting but that they should have a day
for it, and verily believing that whatsoever their former
disappointments were, they should have more done for them by and from
our divisions than they were able to do for themselves.” The Levellers
were working in concert with the Cavaliers, “endeavouring to put us into
blood and confusion, more desperate and dangerous confusion than England
ever yet saw.” Republicans of position were joining with the Levellers
to create discontent and mutiny amongst the soldiers, and the delay to
vote money for the payment of the army and the insufficiency of the sum
yet voted had furthered these designs. The army in Scotland was thirty
weeks behindhand with its pay, and in danger of being reduced to take
free quarters. A plot had been discovered to seize Monk, make someone
else general, and march the army into England to overthrow the
Government. Under such conditions, it was impossible for the Protector
to consent to so great a reduction of the army, or to give up the
control of it. “If,” said he, “the power of the militia should be
yielded up at such a time as this, when there is as much need of it to
keep this cause, as there was to get it, what would become of us all?”
Nor was it possible for him at any time to surrender the control of the
army if the balance of the constitution was to be preserved. Unless that
control were equally shared between the Protector and Parliament, said
Cromwell, it would put an end to the Protector’s power “for doing the
good he ought, or hindering Parliament from perpetuating themselves,
from imposing what religion they please on the consciences of men, or
what government they please upon the nation.” If this fundamental
principle were abandoned, all the others would be endangered.
“Therefore,” he concluded, “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 here any longer.”
The plots of which Cromwell had spoken were widespread and dangerous,
but the vigilance of the Government nipped them in the bud.
Major-General Overton, whom the Scottish mutineers had pitched upon as
their leader, was imprisoned first in the Tower and then in Jersey.
Major-General Harrison, whom the Fifth Monarchy men in England relied
upon to head them, was sent to Carisbrooke Castle. Major Wildman, the
chief of the Levellers, was arrested in the act of dictating a
“Declaration of the free and well affected people of England now in arms
against the tyrant, Oliver Cromwell.” The seizure of many royalist
agents paralysed the plots of the Cavaliers. Their rising had been fixed
to take place on February 13th, but it was adjourned for three weeks,
and when March came, though there were gatherings in half a dozen
places, so few obeyed the signal that the conspirators generally
dispersed, and went home again. The only actual outbreak took place at
Salisbury, where Colonel Penruddock and Sir Joseph Wagstaff got together
three or four hundred men, and proclaimed Charles II. Then they made for
Cornwall, where royalist feeling was still strong, but they were
overtaken and routed by Cromwell’s soldiers at South Molton in
Devonshire. Penruddock and a few others were executed, and some scores
of their followers were transported to the West Indies to work in the
sugar plantations.
As soon as the insurrection was over, Cromwell, to show his desire to
diminish the burdens of the nation, and his wish to meet as far as
possible the reasonable demands of the late Parliament, took in hand the
reduction of the army. During the summer and autumn of 1655, ten or
twelve thousand men were disbanded, and the pay of those maintained in
the service was diminished. Then followed an extension of military rule
which brought more odium upon the Protector than any other act of his
Government. England was divided into twelve districts, and over each was
set an officer with the local rank of major-general, and the special
duty of maintaining the order of his district. He was charged to put in
force an elaborate system of police regulations meant to prevent
conspiracies against the Government, and to see to the execution of all
laws relating to public morals. He had command of the local militia, and
of a troop of horse raised in every county to supplement it.
This “standing militia of horse” as it was termed, consisted of about
six thousand men, paid a small sum as a retaining fee, and liable to be
called out at a day’s notice. The eighty thousand pounds a year required
to maintain them was to be procured by a tax of ten per cent. on the
income of the royalist gentry, the assessment and collection of which
were entrusted to the major-generals assisted by local commissioners.
As a measure of police the institution was a great success, but
politically it was a great mistake. It was a reversal of the policy
which Cromwell had hitherto followed. By the amnesty he had carried in
1652, and by the repeal of the compulsory engagement to be faithful to
the Commonwealth, Cromwell had sought to induce the Royalists to forget
their defeat and to become good citizens. In the declaration now
published, to justify his proceedings for securing the peace of the
nation, he adopted the view that the Royalists were irreconcilable. They
had laboured, he complained, to keep themselves distinct and separate
from the well-affected, “as if they would avoid the very beginning of
union.” They bred their children under the ejected clergy, and confined
their marriages within their own party, “as if they meant to entail
their quarrel and prevent the means to reconcile posterity.” People
might say it was unjust to punish all the Royalists for the fault of a
few, but “the whole party generally were involved in this business,”
either directly or indirectly. Therefore, “if there were need of greater
forces to carry on the work, it was a most righteous thing to put the
charge on that party which was the cause of it.”
The defence convinced only the supporters of the Government. To the rest
of England, the arbitrary and inquisitorial proceedings of the
major-generals were sufficient to condemn the institution. It was
evident that the military party amongst the Protector’s advisers had
obtained the upper hand of the lawyers and civilians. The Protectorate,
which had hitherto striven to seem a moderate and constitutional
government, stood revealed as a military despotism.
Meanwhile a legal opposition more dangerous than royalist plots
threatened the Protector’s authority. The lawyers began to call in
question the validity of his ordinances, and the judges to manifest
scruples about enforcing them. Whitelocke and Widdrington, two of the
Commissioners of the Great Seal, resigned their posts because of
scruples about executing the ordinance for the reform of Chancery.
Judges Newdigate and Thorpe declined to act on the commission appointed
for the trial of the insurgents in the north. A merchant named Cony
refused to pay customs duties not imposed by act of Parliament, and his
counsel, Serjeant Twysden, asserted that their levy by Cromwell’s
ordinance was contrary to Magna Carta, Chief-Justice Rolle, before whom
the case came, resigned his place to avoid determining the question.
Cromwell met this opposition by arresting those who refused to pay
taxes, sending Cony’s lawyers to the Tower, and replacing the doubters
by more compliant judges. Cony, intimidated or cajoled, withdrew his
plea, and the lawyers apologised and submitted. Necessity was the
Protector’s only excuse for these despotic acts. “The people,” he had
asserted when he dissolved Parliament, “will prefer their safety to
their passions, and their real security to forms, when necessity calls
for supplies.” Convinced that the maintenance of his Government was for
the good of the people, he was resolved to maintain it by force, and did
not shrink from the avowal. “’Tis against the will of the nation: there
will be nine in ten against you,” Calamy is reported to have told
Cromwell, when he assumed his protectorship. “Very well,” said Cromwell,
“but what if I should disarm the nine, and put a sword in the tenth
man’s hands. Would not that do the business?”
Nevertheless, neither the argument from necessity nor the appeal to
force could persuade the Republican leaders to recognise the authority
of the Government. Men like Vane and Ludlow steadily refused even an
engagement not to act against it.
“Why will you not own this Government to be a legal government?” said
Lambert to Ludlow. “Because,” replied Ludlow, “it seems to me to be in
substance a re-establishment of that which we all engaged against, and
had with a great expense of blood and treasure abolished.” “What is it
you would have?” asked the Protector himself. “That which we fought
for,” said Ludlow, “that the nation might be governed by its own
consent.” “I am as much for government by consent as any man,” answered
Cromwell, “but where shall we find that consent?”
That was the difficulty. Ludlow said that the consent required was that
of “those of all sorts who had acted with fidelity and affection to the
public.” Vane in his _Healing Question_ said that a convention
representing “the whole body of adherents to this cause” was the only
body that had a right to determine the government of the nation. Both
were blind to the fact that the divisions of the Puritan party had made
agreement impossible, and that government by consent would necessarily
bring about the restoration of the Stuarts.
In the summer of 1656, the Protector summoned a second Parliament,
although according to the terms of the “Instrument” he need not have
done so till 1657. He needed money to carry on the war with Spain, and
the major-generals told him that they could secure the election of
members favourable to the Government. When the elections came, the
major-generals had an unpleasant surprise. Everywhere the arbitrary
measures of the last eighteen months had aroused general discontent. “No
courtiers, nor swordsmen,” was the popular cry, and in the counties,
where the electorate was too large to be overawed, a large number of
opposition candidates were returned. When Parliament met, the
Protector’s Council assumed the right to decide on the qualifications of
the persons elected, and excluded a hundred members as disaffected to
the Government.
Those excluded protested, but their protest was unheeded; those allowed
to sit submitted with hardly a murmur. They were in general moderate
Presbyterians or Independents, willing to support any Government which
promised tranquillity to a nation weary of political strife. Their
willingness to accept Cromwell as Protector was shown by an act
annulling the title of the Stuarts to the throne, and by another making
it high treason to plot for the overthrow of his Government. The capture
of the Spanish treasure ships by Stayner, which happened just about the
opening of the session, gave Cromwell’s foreign policy the prestige of
success, and the House responded to his appeal for supplies by approving
the Spanish war and voting £400,000 for its expenses.
On other questions, it soon appeared how little even adherents of the
Protectorate sympathised with the Protector’s hostility to religious
persecution, and how much they resented the arbitrary proceedings of the
major-generals. In the case of James Naylor the House assumed judicial
power, and many members were eager to punish his blasphemies with death.
Cromwell’s intervention was repulsed and Naylor was sentenced to be
branded, scourged, and imprisoned at pleasure. Still more bitter was the
struggle over the bill for continuing the “decimation” tax imposed on
the Cavaliers for the support of the new militia. The major-generals
were attacked from all quarters of the House, and the tax was denounced
as unjust, and as a breach of the public faith. Cromwell’s son-in-law,
Claypole, spoke against the bill, and so did his trusted councillor,
Lord Broghill. Excepting the soldiers themselves, few defended it, and
it was finally negatived by an overwhelming majority.
While these debates were still in progress, a new plot against the
Protector’s life was discovered. Miles Sindercombe, a discharged soldier
of Levelling principles, after the failure of several schemes for
shooting Cromwell from a window on his way to Hampton Court, or
assassinating him in his coach as he took the air in Hyde Park,
attempted to set Whitehall Chapel on fire, hoping to find a better
opportunity in the confusion. When an account of the plot was laid
before Parliament, Mr. Ashe, a Presbyterian member of little note, moved
a startling addition to the address of congratulation. “It would tend
very much to the preservation of himself and us,” he declared, “that his
Highness would be pleased to take upon him the government according to
the ancient constitution. Both our liberties and peace and the
preservation and privilege of his Highness would then be founded upon an
old and sure foundation.”
The same suggestion had often been made outside the walls of the House.
In the first draft of the “Instrument of Government,” the officers had
offered Cromwell the title of King instead of Protector, and he had
refused it. In August, 1655, a petition had been circulated in London
pressing Cromwell to assume the title of King or Emperor, but its author
had been reprimanded by the Council, and the petition suppressed. At the
close of 1656, the victories over the Spaniards had roused a widespread
feeling that Cromwell was worthy to be enrolled amongst English kings.
It found expression in Waller’s verses on the capture of the Spanish
treasure ships.
“Let it be as the glad nation prays,” sang the poet.
“Let the rich ore forthwith be melted down,
And the state fixed, by making him a crown;
With ermine clad and purple, let him hold
A royal sceptre made of Spanish gold.”
But neither foreign glories nor domestic dangers were so strong a motive
for the revival of monarchy as the desire to return to constitutional
government. The reaction against the rule of the Fifth Monarchy men had
made Cromwell Protector, the reaction against the rule of the swordsmen
produced the attempt to make him King. “They are so highly incensed
against the arbitrary actings of the major-generals,” wrote an observing
member of Parliament, “that they are greedy of any power that will be
ruled and limited by law.” Ashe’s suggestion was denounced as a crime by
a few staunch Republicans, but it fell upon fruitful ground. Five weeks
later, Alderman Pack, one of the members for London, brought in a bill
proposing a revision of the constitution and a revival of monarchy.
Republicans regarded the scheme as prompted by Cromwell himself, but in
reality it was the work of the merchants and the lawyers of the middle
party. Again the military element in the House took one side and the
civil the other. The major-generals, backed by the soldiers and the
Republicans, stubbornly contested the Bill, article by article, but at
last, on March 25th, the House resolved, by 123 to 62 votes, that the
Protector should be asked to assume the name and office of King. On the
31st of March, the scheme was presented to the Protector for acceptance,
under the title of “The Humble Petition and Advice” of Parliament.
Cromwell’s answer was hesitating and ambiguous. He expressed his thanks
for the honour done him, and his approval of the new constitution, but
ended with a refusal. He said that as he could not accept a part of the
scheme without accepting the whole, he could not “find it his duty to
God and the Parliament to undertake this charge under that title.” For
the next five weeks committees of Parliament argued with the Protector
to remove his scruples and to prove the necessity of his accepting the
crown. The title meant everything to them.
“Parliament,” wrote Thurloe, “will not be persuaded that there can
be a settlement any other way. The title is not the question, but
it’s the office, which is known to the laws and to the people. They
know their duty to a king and his to them. Whatever else there is
will be wholly new, and upon the next occasion will be changed
again. Besides they say the name Protector came in with the sword,
and will never be the ground of any settlement, nor will there be a
free Parliament so long as that continues, and as it savours of the
sword now, so it will at last bring all things to be military.”
But the same reasons which made the revival of monarchy seem so
desirable to Parliament and the lawyers, made it obnoxious to the army.
A month before the offer of the crown to Cromwell, Major-General Lambert
and a hundred officers petitioned him to refuse it. Cromwell answered
with firmness; to him their objections to the title seemed overstrained
and unreasonable. “Time was,” he reminded them, “when they boggled not
at the word king.” “For his own part,” he added, “he loved the title as
little as they did.” It was only “a feather in a hat.” But the policy of
the officers had failed. The constitution they had drawn up needed
mending. The experiment of the major-generals had ended in failure. “It
is time,” he concluded, “to come to a settlement, and to lay aside
arbitrary proceedings so unacceptable to the nation.”
Cromwell was desirous to accept the constitution drawn up by Parliament,
because it seemed to secure that settlement by consent of the nation, so
long and so vainly sought. “I am hugely taken with the thing,
settlement, with the word, and with the notion of it,” declared Cromwell
to the parliamentary committee. “I think he is not worthy to live in
England that is not.”
In itself the constitutional scheme contained in the Petition and Advice
seemed a good scheme. There was the monarchical element which Cromwell
had pronounced desirable in 1657. There were the checks on the arbitrary
power of the House of Commons which he always thought necessary, not
only in the existence of a written constitution, such as the officers
had devised in 1653, but in the revival of a Second Chamber as a balance
to the Commons. Civil liberty seemed fully provided for, and “that great
natural and civil liberty, liberty of conscience,” securely guaranteed.
“The things provided in the Petition,” asserted Cromwell, “do secure the
liberties of the people of God so as they never before had them.”
For five weeks these conferences continued. “I do judge of myself,” said
the Protector soon after they began, “that there is no necessity of this
name of king, for the other name may do as well.” He was even disposed
to think that God had blasted the title as well as the family which had
borne it. Moreover, he told Parliament, many good men could not swallow
the title, and they should not run the risk of losing one friend or one
servant for the sake of a thing that was of so little importance. If
left to himself the Protector would probably have waived his scruples,
and accepted, but this last consideration decided his answer. From many
a staunch Cromwellian outside the army, letters and pamphlets against
kingship reached Cromwell. He was plainly told that for him “to re-edify
that old structure of government” which God by his instrumentality had
overthrown, and to set up again that monarchy which Parliament had
declared burdensome and destructive to the nation, would be “a fearful
apostacy.” In the army, it was clear that his acceptance of the crown
would create an irreconcilable schism. When the day for his final answer
came, Fleetwood, Desborough, and Lambert threatened to lay down their
commissions if he accepted, and that morning about thirty officers
presented a petition to Parliament, begging it to press the Protector no
more, and protesting against the revival of kingship. On May 8, 1657,
Cromwell answered Parliament with another refusal, saying: “Though I
think the act of government doth consist of very excellent parts in all
but that one thing of the title as to me, I cannot undertake this
government with the title of King.”
Parliament, though much disappointed, took the hint these words
contained. Had Cromwell definitely refused when the Petition and Advice
was first offered to him, Parliament would have thrown up the whole
scheme in disgust. As it was, in its anxiety to obtain his acceptance,
it had adopted all the amendments which he suggested during the
conferences, and had gone too far to abandon the constitution so
carefully elaborated. On May 25th, the Petition and Advice was presented
to Cromwell again, with the title of Protector substituted for that of
King, and this time he gave his assent to it. In Westminster Hall, on
Friday, the 26th of June, he was for the second time installed as
Protector, with great pomp and ceremony. The Speaker, as representative
of Parliament, invested him with a robe of purple velvet, lined with
ermine, “being the habit anciently used at the investiture of princes,”
presented him with a Bible, girt a sword to his side, and put a golden
sceptre into his hands. He took the oath to maintain the Protestant
religion and to preserve the peace and the rights of the three nations,
and sat down in the chair of state. The trumpets sounded, the people
shouted “God save the Lord Protector,” and the heralds made proclamation
after the ancient fashion when kings were crowned.
Cromwell had gained what he desired. At last his authority rested upon a
constitutional basis. Henceforth he was not merely the nominee of the
army, but the elect of the representatives of the people. Moreover,
under the Petition and Advice his powers were more extensive than they
had been under the Instrument of Government. He had acquired the right
to nominate his own successor and to appoint, subject to the approval of
Parliament, the seventy members of the new Second Chamber. He had
obtained a permanent revenue of one million three hundred thousand
pounds, which Parliament held sufficient to cover the ordinary
expenditure of Government in time of peace, while for the next three
years he had been granted an additional revenue of six hundred thousand
pounds to meet the cost of the war. On the other hand, the authority of
Parliament had been enlarged, and that of the Protector’s Council
diminished. Parliament had gained control over its own elections, and
the arbitrary exclusion of its members was made henceforth impossible.
But it remained to be seen whether a Parliament, representing all
sections of the Puritan party, would accept a settlement made by a
packed Parliament, or whether the newly devised Second Chamber would be
a more effectual check to the Lower House than the paper limitations of
the Instrument of Government.
In January, 1658, when Parliament met again after a six months’
vacation, the situation was altered. About forty of the Protector’s
chief supporters in the Lower House had been called to the new Second
Chamber, and their places had not been filled up by fresh elections. At
the same time all the leading Republicans, excluded at the opening of
the first session,—old parliamentary hands, skilful in debate, and
bitterly hostile to the Protectorate,—swelled the ranks of the
Opposition. Instead of there being a strong Government majority, the two
parties in the House of Commons were pretty equally balanced.
Nevertheless, the Protector’s opening speech was full of hope and
confidence. Looking back on the past work of this Parliament and the
settlement achieved by it, his heart overflowed with gratitude and
gladness. “How God hath redeemed us as we stand this day! Not from
trouble and sorrow and anger only, but into a blessed and happy estate
and condition, comprehensive of all interests.” We have “peace and rest
out of ten years’ war,” religious freedom after years of persecution.
“Who could have forethought, when we were plunged into the midst of our
troubles, that ever the people of God should have had liberty to worship
God without fear of enemies?” Let them own what God had done, and build
on this foundation of civil and spiritual liberties which he had given
them.
“If God shall bless you in this work,” continued Cromwell, “and make
the meeting happy on that account, you shall be called the blessed
of the Lord. The generations to come shall bless us. You shall be
‘the repairers of breaches, and the restorers of paths to dwell in.’
And if there be any higher work which mortals can attain unto in the
world beyond this, I acknowledge my ignorance of it.”
Cromwell was speedily undeceived. As soon as the proceedings began, it
was evident that a breach between the two Houses was imminent. In
Cromwell’s second speech to them, four days after the session began, he
spoke of his fears rather than his hopes. Abroad, he said, the
Protestant cause was in danger through the complications in Northern
Europe, and Charles II. had got together an army and was projecting a
landing in England. At home, the Cavaliers were planning another
insurrection, but the greatest danger lay in their own divisions. “Take
us in that temper we are in: it is the greatest miracle that ever befell
the sons of men that we are got again to peace.” Consider how many
different sects and parties there were in the nation, each striving to
be uppermost. “If God did not hinder, it would all make up one
confusion. We should find there would be but one Cain in England, if God
did not restrain; we should have another more bloody civil war than ever
we had in England.” What stood between England and anarchy except the
army, and except the Government established by the Petition and Advice?
“Have you any frame or model of things which would satisfy the minds of
men if this be not the frame?”
The Republican leaders, who had now obtained the guidance of the Lower
House, were deaf to these arguments. They were pledged by oath to be
true and faithful to the Lord Protector, and not to contrive anything
against his lawful authority, and they were careful to keep the word of
promise to the ear. But they insisted on discussing the Petition and
Advice over again, taking nothing for granted which had been done during
their absence. “Unless you make foundations sure, it will not do your
work,” said Haslerig. “We who were not privy to your debates upon which
you made your resolutions should have liberty to debate it over again,”
added another. With great acuteness they fixed upon the authority of the
new Second Chamber as the point of attack, denied it to be a House of
Lords as Cromwell styled it, and insisted that its proper title,
according to the Petition and Advice, was “the other House.”
If it were suffered to call itself a House of Lords, it would claim all
the legislative and judicial powers the old Lords had possessed: and
then what would become of the rights of the people? The people, said
Scot, had been by the providence of God set free from any authority
which could exercise a veto on their resolutions. “Will they thank you,
if you bring such a negative upon them? What was fought for, but to
arrive at a capacity to make your own laws?” “The Commons of England,”
chimed in Haslerig, “will quake to hear that they are returning to
Egypt.” For seven whole sittings these debates continued, and the Lower
House refused to have any dealings with the Upper House till this
question was decided. To the republicans the title meant everything.
“Admit Lords and you admit all,” argued Ashley Cooper. “I can suffer to
be torn in pieces,” cried Haslerig, “I could endure that; but to betray
the liberties of the people of England, that I cannot.”
The Republican leaders did not confine their opposition to words. Some
of them entered into communication with the malcontents in the city and
the army. It was arranged that a petition should be presented, signed by
ten thousand persons in London, demanding the limitation of the
Protector’s power over the army, and the recognition of the House of
Commons as the supreme authority in the nation. In reply, the House was
to vote an address asserting both these principles, and if need be to
appoint Fairfax commander-in-chief instead of Cromwell. The Republicans
expected to be backed by part of the army, for there were rumours of
disaffection in the ranks. Soldiers had been heard to say that under
pretence of liberty of conscience they had been fooled into betraying
the civil liberties of their country, and all to make one family great.
And nowhere was the hostility to the new House of Lords stronger than
amongst the officers of the Protector’s own regiment of horse.
The scheme came to Cromwell’s ears, and the next morning he sent a
sudden summons to both Houses to meet him (February 4, 1658). He was
Protector, he told them, by virtue of the Petition and Advice. “There is
not a man living can say I sought it, no, not a man nor woman treading
upon English ground.” They had petitioned and advised him to undertake
his office, and he looked to them to make their engagements good. Then,
addressing himself to the members of the Commons, he complained that,
instead of owning the settlement made by their consent, they were
attempting to upset it. “The nation is in likelihood of running into
more confusion in these fifteen or sixteen days that you have sat, than
it hath been from the rising of the last session to this day. Through
the intention of devising a Commonwealth again, that some people might
be the men that might rule all.” Some were “endeavouring to engage the
army to carry that thing,” others “to stir up the people of this town
into a tumulting.” These things tended “to nothing else but the playing
of the King of Scots’ game,” and could end in nothing but blood and
confusion. “I think it high time,” he concluded, “that an end be put to
your sitting, and I do dissolve this Parliament. And let God be judge
between you and me.”
“Amen,” responded the defiant Republicans.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
THE GREAT SEAL OF THE PROTECTOR.
(_From Henfrey’s “Numismata Cromwelliana.”_)
]
[Illustration]