RICHARD CROMWELL.--ANARCHY.--THE RESTORATION.--1658-1660.
Quand on se trompe dans quelque projet pour sa fortune, ce n’est
qu’un coup d’épée dans l’eau; mais dans les entreprises de
l’Etat, il n’y a pas de coup d’épée dans l’eau.--MONTESQUIEU.
Cromwell, by uniting in his own person the offices of general and
protector, had curbed the ambition of his military subordinates, while
he established a government capable of winning the respect if not the
affection of civilians, The standing army was a fact and a necessity
against which it would have been vain for him to contend, but none the
less was it a worm in the bud of the Protectorate. The retention of
such an army in the hands of the executive must in time have proved
fatal to liberty. It was indeed just possible that the new protector
might possess both the ability and moderation of his great predecessor,
be willing to rule as a constitutional king, and be able to bridle
the army till he could dispense with it. But if these qualities were
not found combined in the same man, the nation must expect shipwreck
on one rock or the other. Should the new protector be capable without
being moderate, he would use the army as an instrument of arbitrary
power; should he on the contrary be moderate without being capable,
his officers might depose him and inaugurate a vicious succession of
ephemeral military governments.
The Petition and Advice gave the protector power to appoint his
successor, and Richard Cromwell, Oliver’s eldest son, now took office
in right of his father’s deathbed nomination. The young man was by
nature not ill fitted to play the part of a constitutional king in
quiet times; he was unprejudiced and not fanatical; his temper was
mild; he was always ready to give ear to counsel. On the other hand he
was deficient in those qualities which are most essential for a ruler
in troubled times; he had not the qualities which ensure obedience
and respect; he had no insight into character; no firmness, no power
of command. Hence the ambition of the officers, combined with his own
weakness, produced a period of anarchy and misgovernment which caused
the Restoration of our English Bourbons to be regarded for a time as a
blessing to the country.
%RICHARD CROMWELL’S PARLIAMENT.%
At first, indeed, the shadow of Oliver’s greatness shielded his son;
at home no faction dared raise its head; abroad foreign governments
recognized the new protector, and refused to hold any communication
with Charles Stuart. This tranquillity, however, lasted but a few
months. The Republicans scoffed at the idea of a man of third-rate
capacity maintaining a throne they had been at such pains to overthrow;
the soldiers despised a general who had never led them to battle. The
leading officers were no admirers of privilege, and were unwilling to
allow that the weak and vacillating Richard gained any right to stand
above themselves from the mere accident of birth. Fleetwood wished to
divide the offices of protector and general and to govern as general
in Richard’s name. Lambert was believed to aspire to the protectorship
itself. “I wish Lambert was dead,” writes a Royalist, “there is no
small danger his reputation with the army may thrust Dick Cromwell
(who sits like an ape on horseback) out of the saddle, and yet not
help the king into it.”[253] The meeting of Parliament was the signal
for action to both Republicans and officers (Jan. 27). Vane opposed
Richard’s right to the protectorship in words winged to reach the
hearts of both Republicans and soldiers. “The people of England,” he
said, “are now renowned all over the world for their great virtue and
discipline; and yet suffer an idiot without courage, without sense,
nay, without ambition, to have dominion in a country of liberty! One
could bear a little with Oliver Cromwell, though, contrary to his oath
of fidelity to the Parliament, contrary to his duty to the public,
contrary to the respect he owed that venerable body from which he
received his authority, he usurped the government. His merit was so
extraordinary, that our judgments, our passions, might be blinded by
it. He made his way to empire by the most illustrious actions: he had
under his command an army that had made him a conqueror, and a people
that had made him their general. But as for Richard Cromwell, his son,
who is he? what are his titles? We have seen that he had a sword by his
side, but did he ever draw it? And, what is of more importance in this
case, is he fit to get obedience from a mighty nation, who could never
make a footman obey him? yet we must recognize this man as our king,
under the style of protector!--a man without birth, without courage,
without conduct. For my part, I declare, sir, it shall never be said
that I made such a man my master.”[254] Richard, however, had many
able friends in the House, such as the lawyers St. John and Whitelock,
Thurloe his secretary, and other civilians and councillors, who hoped
to establish an hereditary and constitutional monarchy under the house
of Cromwell. These succeeded in obtaining a majority to follow them.
Richard’s ‘right’ to govern, though not his ‘undoubted right’ was
recognized, and a vote was carried to transact business with Oliver’s
lords, the ‘Other House.’ The officers, however, desiring themselves
to govern the country, and jealous of the influence which civilians
exercised in Richard’s counsels, determined on the dissolution of the
Parliament. Desborough, acting as their spokesman, told the protector
that if he would do as they proposed, the officers would take care of
him, but if he refused, they would do without him and leave him to
shift for himself, Richard yielded, and thus virtually surrendered his
authority into their hands (April 22nd).
%FALL OF RICHARD CROMWELL.%
The struggle between the army and the civil power, which Oliver had
closed by the establishment of the protectorate, was now renewed.
Conscious of their own unpopularity with the country, instead of
summoning a new Parliament, the officers restored the Rump (May 7th).
At the request of this body, Richard retired from Whitehall and
thus formally resigned his ten-months’ dignity (July). The officers
intended to govern in the name of their allies; the Rump on its part
meant to rule the soldiery. But in revolutionary times might is right,
and the people fully understanding the terms on which this extinct
Parliament was revived, only derided its assumption of power. “Do
the men in the Parliament House signify any more,” says a pamphlet,
“than the man that stands upon the clock in Westminster Abbey with
the hammer in his hand, and when the iron wheel bids him strike, he
strikes: hath it not been so between the army and the Parliament, as
it is called?”[255] During Oliver’s protectorate the Presbyterians
with all their dislike to his rule would never unite with “malignants”
for the restoration of Charles Stuart. But now the dread of military
tyrants overcame fears and prejudices. The union of Royalists and
Presbyterians, however, itself restored in turn a forced accord between
the House and the officers, which for the time crushed the hopes of
the rival coalition. The same spies whom Oliver had once employed now
revealed to the new government the conspiracies of its opponents. Only
in Cheshire did any considerable rising take place. Sir George Booth,
who appeared at the head of 4000 men, was defeated by Lambert and
brought a prisoner to London. After this success the old quarrel was
renewed. The officers asked that a standing senate should carry on the
government in conjunction with a House of Commons; and further that no
commissions should be revoked without the consent of a court-martial.
By the first demand they thought to place the government virtually in
their own hands; by the second to secure for the military a complete
independence of the civil power. The House in its turn tried to keep
the army dependent upon themselves for pay by voting it treason to levy
money without consent of Parliament. Having thus as they hoped defended
themselves against a sudden dissolution, they proceeded to cashier
Lambert, Desborough, and six other colonels; and to put the command of
the army in commission, by reducing Fleetwood, whom they had appointed
commander-in-chief to check Booth’s rising, to the position of a mere
president of a board of seven (Oct. 12th). These votes were equal to
a declaration of war, and the next day Lambert marched to Westminster
at the head of 3000 soldiers. He found a guard of several regiments,
friendly to the Republicans, already stationed round Parliament House.
These regiments refused to fight their old comrades in arms, and
fraternized with Lambert’s men. Lenthall, the Speaker, tried in vain
to recall the troops to allegiance to the House. As the nominal head
of the new government he had lately renewed the officers’ commissions.
“I am your general,” he said, “I expect your obedience.” “If you
had marched before us over Warrington Bridge” (p. 229) “we should
have known you,” was the curt reply. The will of the army had been
expressed, and the Rump discontinued its sittings.
%ANARCHY.--THE RUMP AGAIN.%
The officers now conducted the government by a Committee of Safety,
consisting of a few Republicans and a majority of their own party.
These military rulers, however, were foiled in their turn. There was
in Scotland another army and another commander-in-chief, whose consent
had not been given to this _pronunciamento_. General Monk owed no
allegiance to Desborough or Fleetwood; locked in his breast he had his
scheme of a settlement for the kingdom.
♦Monk marches from Scotland.♦ Setting his army in motion to march
south, he astutely proclaimed his intention ‘to stand to, and assert
the liberty and authority of Parliament.’ The Republicans understood
that he came to restore the Rump; the Cavaliers and Presbyterians that
he came to summon a free Parliament, and thus prepare the way for the
restoration of the Stuarts. Republicans, Presbyterians, and Cavaliers
all took courage and refused obedience to the Committee of Safety,
and the country was practically without any government at all. A part
of the fleet declared for the Republicans, and took custom duties of
all ships passing up and down the Thames. The governor of Portsmouth
admitted into the town some regiments of Republican troops. Taxes could
only be levied by force, for all over the country the people refused to
pay ‘without consent of Parliament.’ The support of Presbyterian London
at the opening of the war had enabled the Parliament to make war upon
the king. But Presbyterian London was now become strongly Royalist, and
its hostility threatened to be fatal to the ascendancy of a divided
army. Fleetwood and Desborough tried in vain to cajole the Common
Council into advancing a loan of £30,000. Soldiers had to be quartered
in the city to prevent the apprentices from rising; quarrels ensued,
and lives were lost on both sides. The goldsmiths in Cheapside and
Lombard Street closed their shops and concealed their money and goods.
The courts in Westminster Hall ceased to sit, for the commissions of
the judges had expired, and there was no authority competent to renew
them. After having thus brought all government to a standstill, the
officers saw only two courses open to them--the one to join with the
Presbyterians and restore the House of Stuart; the other to reinstate
the Republicans. The latter was preferred, and the members of the Rump
resumed their sittings (26th Dec.).
%THE RESTORATION.%
Monk, meanwhile, was advancing from Scotland at the head of 7000
men. Lambert some weeks previously had marched north to oppose his
approach with a force of 10,000 men (Nov.). But when his force had
reached Marston Moor, the great Yorkshireman, Lord Fairfax, emerged
from his retirement in Wharfedale to decide the fate of England. Like
other sincere patriots, he regarded the restoration of the Stuarts
as the only means of saving his country from utter anarchy. He had
already promised Monk to effect a rising and attack Lambert in the
rear as soon as the Scotch army had engaged him in front. But his
victory was bloodless. A message came that a whole brigade in the
rear of Lambert’s army was ready to join him the next day on Marston
Moor. Upon his arrival the troops presented their old general with a
petition in favour of a free Commonwealth and against a government by
a single person. Fairfax in reply tore the paper in pieces, and placed
himself at the head of his raw Yorkshire levies, as though with them
alone he were ready to fight a veteran army. His decision produced
a strange effect. Troop after troop, regiment after regiment, came
over to his side. Lambert, almost entirely deserted, slunk away to a
country house[256] (3rd Jan.). Monk was now able to march to London
unopposed.
♦Monk declares for a free Parliament.♦ When his troops were once
securely quartered in the capital, he declared himself plainly for a
‘free Parliament.’ This meant the return of Charles Stuart, for which
every four men out of five now longed (10th Feb.). The city went wild
with delight. Bells were rung; loyal healths were drunk in every
street; the whole heaven was made aglow with the light of hundreds
of bonfires; hardly one without a rump roasting before it, ‘for the
celebration of the funeral of the Parliament.’ That funeral was near
at hand. The Republicans were still sitting when the old Presbyterian
members, who were expelled by Colonel Pride eleven years before, were
escorted by a guard to retake their seats at Westminster (21st Feb.).
♦Long Parliament dissolved by its own act.♦ According to promises
made to Monk, these members carried the voluntary dissolution of the
House, and named the 25th of April for the meeting of a new and free
Parliament (16th March). This new Parliament is commonly described
as a convention, being summoned without the royal writ. Conventions
are, in fact, national assemblies held, when the constitution is
in abeyance, for the specific purpose of establishing some form of
government. The Lower House was filled with Cavaliers and Presbyterians
so Royalist in feeling that the few Republicans who were returned
hardly dared show their faces among their fellow-members. The
House of Lords was represented at its opening by only ten peers,
Presbyterians, who resumed their seats after an absence of eleven
years. This Convention at once invited Charles Stuart to return to
his kingdom. There was reason, however, to fear that his return might
not be accomplished without bloodshed, for, though the nation was
united, the national will was opposed by a body of 50,000 fighting
men. Every precaution was taken by Monk to divide the army and raise a
force that might be able to cope with it. The fleet had now declared
itself on the side of the nation; the London train-bands alone
numbered 20,000 men; the militia was being trained and organized in
every county; the citizens spared neither wine nor money to secure
the favour, or at least the neutrality, of Monk’s troops, who were
quartered amongst them. Yet men and officers would sooner have fought
their new friends than feasted with them. ‘They were like beasts,’
they would say, when feasting in the city halls, ‘set up a-fatting
for the slaughter.’ But the army, though numerous, was not capable
of combined and decisive action. Numbers, even though backed by
bravery and skill, can avail little without a leader. The position
of Monk commanded the obedience of the soldiers, while the support
of Fairfax conciliated their feelings. On the other hand, neither
Lambert, Desborough, nor Fleetwood could inspire the confidence that
where they led victory must follow. Charles Stuart returned from his
exile in peace and triumph. Yet on the day when the new king made his
entry into the capital, and on his way passed through the army which
was drawn up on Blackheath to meet him, the officers kissed the royal
hand with evident reluctance, while the men, as they stood sullenly
amidst rejoicing thousands, looked like some black thunder-cloud
that might end the sunny day of triumph by dispersing the crowds of
welcomers in terror to their homes (29th May).[257] The dangerous day
of entry over, the standing army was within a few months disbanded.
The enemies of the royal prerogative feared it might be remodelled
into an instrument of tyranny; while zealous Royalists still dreaded
the terrible troopers who had raised a Cromwell to the throne. The
return of the Stuarts, therefore, benefited the country by saving
it from the rule of military governors who might have tried to play
the rôle of the great protector without his incomparable genius for
statesmanship. The longer the struggle lasted, the fiercer and more
sanguinary it must have become, and all peace-loving men dreaded the
day when the Fifth-Monarchists, Anabaptists, and Republicans who filled
the army should each in succession signalize a short-lived triumph by
a proscription of political and religious opponents. The Stuarts or
anarchy--that was the only choice. The Restoration may therefore justly
be regarded as a necessity, but nevertheless the day that brought back
the exiled race to our shores, was the beginning of a brief but dark
period of decay. The reaction which follows a revolution is always
a heavy drawback on the advantages which may ultimately spring from
the triumph of the people in a struggle. With the return of Charles
Stuart came a great reaction. An heroic age had gone by, and with it
all noble aspirations. The government of Charles II. was the most
shameless England ever endured. The leaders of the State and the
leaders of society were alike venal and immoral. As in the worst days
of the Roman empire, virtue and self-respect vanished together.[258]
Avowedly governed by self-interest, cupidity, and mere sensual desires,
they refused to believe in the existence of higher motives of action.
The king and his courtiers alike lived profligate lives; the king
and his ministers alike received pensions from France. The Episcopal
Church again set herself to work to teach the divine right of kings
and the duty of passive obedience, and repaid the Presbyterians for
the active help they had given in the Restoration, by rejecting all
proposals for accommodation and inaugurating an universal persecution
of nonconformists. The House of Commons, in an excess of loyal zeal,
undid much of the best work of the first years of the Long Parliament;
it passed persecuting laws, which continued for nearly two centuries to
inflame the religious passions of the strong, and corrupt the morals
of the weak; broke up the union which the united efforts of Vane and
Cromwell had established between the three kingdoms; by repealing
the Triennial Bill destroyed the only security then existing for the
continuity of Parliamentary life; and, by returning to the old system
of representation, placed in power a corrupt oligarchy representing
but a mere minority of the nation, which tried to press down the
most active forces of opinion, causing upheaval after upheaval, till
the buried giants were at last rendered harmless by the outlet given
through the Reform Bill of 1832.
%CAUSES OF REACTION.%
The reaction which set in in favour of the Stuarts was a necessary
consequence of the revolution itself. In the beginning of a struggle
for freedom, the people start with fresh vigour, believing in the
goodness of their cause and the great things they are about to
accomplish. Civil war soon engenders strong feelings of partisanship,
and these in turn errors and excesses. If the popular revolution is
successful, a newly established government, not having prescription on
its side, cannot pursue the same mild treatment of political offenders
as if it rested on a foundation of centuries. Hence it has recourse to
harsh or arbitrary acts, and brings into disrepute the great watchwords
in the name of which the struggle for freedom commenced. A generation
had now grown up which knew nothing of the sentences of the Courts of
Star Chamber and High Commission, or of the arbitrary acts committed
under Strafford’s policy of “thorough;” while even in the minds of
older men the remembrance of all this had been dimmed by the changes
and troubles of the past sixteen years. The erection of high courts of
justice, the sale and transportation of freeborn Englishmen, government
by major-generals, not to mention the forced observance of Sundays and
fast days, with the suppression of old-established games, these seemed
after all to be the outcome of Republican liberty and justice. If the
apostles of liberty only declaimed against tyranny done for them, not
by them, then indeed “all men were liars.” It is by thus sowing the
seeds of disbelief in the goodness of the best of causes that times
of revolution produce immoral politicians. Men see acts of violence,
which necessity itself finds hard to justify, constantly committed
around them; what is held sacred on one day contemned on another;
oaths required to which neither heart nor intellect assents. At last
the pressure of the times makes self-interest the rule of action;
personal security a point of greater moment than fidelity to friends
or country. The career of General Monk, who shared in the government
both before and after the Restoration, bears the stamp of his political
training. His family was Royalist, and he originally served in the
king’s armies in Ireland. On being taken prisoner he changed his side,
and received a commission in the Parliament’s army. Cromwell, who
noticed his military genius, advanced him to be commander-in-chief in
Scotland, and he afterwards served as admiral on board the fleet, and
shared with Blake the triumphs of the Dutch war. His fidelity Cromwell
had never cause to suspect, and if Richard had had the strength to
maintain his own power, and so guard the interests of his friends, Monk
would not have withdrawn his support from the protectorate. But no
principle bound him to any special form of government, or to the House
of Cromwell more than to the House of Stuart. Foreseeing the issue of
events, he determined to be the first to act for the king, and thus
to gain the credit of the Restoration. His reward was a seat in the
council, and the title of Duke of Albemarle. Together with many others,
who had taken a leading part in the late government, he did not shrink
from sitting as judge in a court of justice which condemned his late
friends to death as traitors. Very different to this was the school in
which the statesmen of the Long Parliament had been trained. During the
first quarter of the century the nation, braced by its triumph over
Catholicism and Spain, was nerved for a struggle to make its political
liberties more secure, and ‘reform reformation’ in religion. The only
weapons it possessed were those offered by a free constitution. A
single deviation from principle, a single sacrifice of the cause of
the nation for that of the man, a single violent and illegal action,
might throw back the work for years if not for centuries. The triumphs
of the past, the great future before them, the necessity of courage
and self-sacrifice, bred a race of heroes, fired by a strong spirit of
patriotism, and by a yet stronger sense of duty, till they were ready
to lay down their lives for their country and their conscience. The
‘men who produce revolutions’ are, indeed, of a different stamp from
the men ‘whom revolutions produce.’
%THE PURITANS AND EDUCATION.%
The general fall in the moral tone of the nation may be also in
part ascribed to errors into which the Puritans were led through
their intense earnestness. The Puritans held that it is one of the
first duties of a government to attend to the subject’s welfare as a
spiritual and intellectual being. This truth was capable of a right
and wise application, as well as a fanatical perversion. Protection of
person and property touches the lower man only; to instruct his mind
and soul concerns the ordering of his higher existence. Thus Milton’s
noble longing was that every faculty of a man’s whole being should
be educated, so that he might have liberty, and know how to use it.
“Make it a shame,” said Cromwell in the same spirit to one of his
Parliaments, “to see men bold in sin and profaneness, and God will
bless you. You will be a blessing to the nation; and by this, will
be more repairers of breaches than by anything in the world. Truly
these things do respect the souls of men, and the spirits--which are
the men--the mind is the man. If that be kept pure, a man signifies
somewhat; if not, I would very fain see what difference there is
betwixt him and a beast. He hath only some activity to do some more
mischief.”[259] With these feelings, Cromwell was specially careful
of educational institutions; he fostered the old universities of the
south, and founded a new one at Durham for the north; he reformed
the character of the ministry--then the only educators--by exacting
a strict inquiry before admission, so that the benefices of the
Church might no longer be the refuge of the idle and the ignorant.
The Long Parliament, when confiscating the property of bishops and
‘delinquents,’ spared any revenues that were devoted to educational
uses. In the New England States, where Puritans held absolute sway,
while the popular voice required the adoption of the foolish policy
of punishing sins as crimes, yet the legislators really raised the
level of society by enacting a law of compulsory education. But though
the chief leaders of the Puritan movement were advanced enough to
perceive the slow but sure effect of education in bringing about a real
improvement in the morals of a people, the large majority of their
followers were allured by the deluding appearances of immediate reform
produced by a policy of coercion. Influenced by Hebrew precedents,
these sanguine spirits hoped by their legislation to compel the nation
to live up to a higher and sterner ideal. Republicans, Independents,
and Presbyterians alike took delight in fencing virtue about with penal
laws, which often related to acts indifferent in themselves. In this
they defeated their own end. Outward conduct was influenced, but the
heart and intellect revolted at the interference. Had the Puritans
wished to excite a desire of raising Maypoles, dancing on Sundays, and
attending play-houses, they could not have done better than forbid any
to take part in such amusements under pain of a fine or a whipping.
To enact for swearing, drinking, and gambling, punishments out of all
proportion to the offence, was the most efficacious means to create
sympathy for offenders. Many, after figuring awkwardly as unwilling
saints, as soon as the unnatural bonds were loosed, wallowed more than
ever in vice, and scoffed at virtue as mere cant and hypocrisy. The
mass of the nation, however, was not so much affected by this reaction
as might be supposed from the profligacy of the court. The Puritan
spirit had too much that was noble in it to be easily extinguished.
It still lives as one of the great moral forces of the nation, and
is still to be seen in its two aspects--in the consuming zeal of the
far-sighted reformer on the one hand, in the narrow but elevating
austerity of the unintelligent and uneducated on the other. It still
helps men to prefer the higher to the lower, the future to the present.
England would not have been what it is had the salt of the nation been
transported elsewhere by a succession of ‘Mayflowers,’ or exterminated
by St. Bartholomew massacres.
%THE REBELLION--THE REVOLUTION.%
In the political sphere, again, although much failed of immediate
accomplishment, the work of Cromwell and his compeers was never really
undone. To use the words of Burke, “a great deal of the furniture
of ancient tyranny was torn to rags.” Taxation without consent of
Parliament was never attempted after the Restoration. Torture was never
employed in England after the meeting of the Long Parliament.[260]
The temper of the nation never again could bear the jurisdiction
of arbitrary courts of justice, Above all there remained in the
recollection of the nation the precedent of the Great Rebellion, The
signal successes of that rebellion were convincing proofs of the power
of the people. In great crises the consciousness, that power lies in
the last resort with the people, can remove aristocratic prejudices
that seem to lie like lead on the minds of legislators. The glories of
Louis Quatorze blinded the eyes of the French court till the lessons
of the Revolution revealed the secret; but to English legislators the
secret was open, that beneath them lay an invisible force, which they
might be allowed to trifle with, but never to trample on. Twenty-eight
years after Charles II. was restored, James II. fled to France. A
coward, a bigot, and a fool, unable to read aright his father’s
history, he endeavoured to establish in England at once arbitrary
government, and the ascendancy of the Catholic religion. Even the
natural supporters of the prerogative went against him. Ministers,
courtiers, and nobles, while loudly avowing their detestation of
treason and rebellion, turned against the tyrant who excluded from
his council all but Papist converts and Jesuits. The clergy, though
regardless of their country’s liberties, turned against the spoiler of
their Church. The people, detesting the tyrant and the bigot alike,
were glad enough to see the upper classes do the work of resistance
for them. The crown was declared vacant, and offered by Parliament to
William and Mary of Orange. By the change of succession a fatal blow
was given to the pernicious doctrine of divine right, and the law
was, once for all, declared superior to the prerogative. William, by
accepting the crown as a gift of Parliament, virtually admitted that he
would reign as a constitutional king, holding sacred the authority of
the law, and carrying out whatever reforms Parliament should consider
essential for the welfare of the people. Thus was the Revolution
terminated, after a struggle which has lasted for nearly all the ninety
years of the Stuart régime. The executive was brought into dependence
upon the legislature, and the government of the country fixed as a
constitutional monarchy. Laws granting toleration to Catholics and to
Puritans, laws securing the liberty of the press, laws securing the
independence of the judges, are all fruits, that time has ripened, of
the armed resistance offered by the Long Parliament to Charles I.
%FRANCE AND ENGLAND.%
In estimating the debt of gratitude that England owes the leaders
of the Great Rebellion, the moderation with which they did their
work must never be forgotten. Even in the heat of civil strife they
respected constitutional forms. That they fought for the king, and
not against him, was not a mere quibble, but the secret of their
strength. It might, in fact, be not unfairly said, that in the first
instance the rebels were not those who maintained the supremacy of
law, but the supporters of the new theory of divine right and the
usurpations they called prerogative. It is indeed remarkable how,
throughout the whole course of English history, the cause of liberty
has less often been advanced by the concession of new rights than by
the ratification of old. Thus the Petition of Rights and the Bill of
Rights, far from introducing any great change into the constitution,
are mainly the reassertion of rights already recognized at law. Such
a course of conservative progress was impossible in France, where the
monarchy destroyed its own foundations by its excesses. The permanence
of kingship in England is due to its association with a popular
constitution. The French monarchy had its constitutional limits,
till a centralized absolutism took the place of free institutions.
Then when the crash came there was nothing known of the constitution
except what was detested. Hence constitutional monarchs in France,
instead of being looked on as representatives of an honoured past, are
simply judged upon their own merits. The first storm of unpopularity
drives them out of office as if their rule was no more than that of an
English ministry. Thus, since the first break in continuity, no form of
government in France has lasted for more than twenty years together.
Again, the English revolution was far less sanguinary than the
French, because its causes were not, as in France, social. In France
an aristocracy, answering both to nobility and gentry in England,
possessed many privileges, which appeared the more odious, because
exercised by men who took no part in the government. In England the
people were not ground down; taxes did not fall heaviest upon those who
had least; a large portion of the nobles and gentry made common cause
with the people; the watchwords of an absolute and envious “equality”
never assumed any prominence in the struggle. There was no rising of a
famine-stricken peasantry; no burning of châteaux; no flight of a whole
aristocracy, to be avenged by foreign invasion. Had Strafford succeeded
in establishing an arbitrary throne, supported by a standing army;
had the English nobles and gentry, in compensation for the loss of
political rights, obtained exemption from taxation and other exclusive
privileges, the revolution might have been deferred indeed, but its
character, when it came, might have been as violent and sanguinary as
the French. Equality before the law, a free press, every political
and social reform that our constitution has been found capable of
adopting without any violent change of form, might then have been only
obtainable by rooting up the old order of things, and severing all the
links that now bind the present to the past. The nation, divided into
factions, hating and fearing one another too much for conciliation or
even for the preservation of political morality, might have fallen a
prey to the ambition of military usurpers, and found itself incapable
of constructing a free and lasting government. De Tocqueville justly
remarks that the effect of two centuries of absolute government on the
French was to make the nation so little prepared to act for itself,
that it could not reform all without destroying all: and hence the same
revolution, which destroyed so many institutions, ideas, and customs
opposed to liberty, destroyed, at the same time, so many others which
are the necessary conditions of liberty, that, like the monarchy, it
destroyed its own foundations by its excesses. Such revolutions may be
said, like Saturn of old, to devour all their own children except the
one who is born the new tyrant to supplant themselves.
%FATE OF REGICIDES.%
The moderation of the leaders of the Rebellion was remarkable enough,
but their faith was even more remarkable; they did not know how to
despair. “If Pope and Spaniard and devil and all set themselves against
us,” says Cromwell, “though they should compass us like bees, yet in
the name of the Lord we should destroy them.” A sort of spiritual
pride, based on the cause for which they fought, was shared by these
Puritan leaders with their less gifted followers, but the faith which
engendered this pride inspired them with a rare humility. Though
they gave proof enough of remarkable abilities, they never regarded
their own personal success, and the success of their cause as bound
up together. “It was a most indifferent thing to him to live or die,”
said Pym; “God could carry on His work by others.” “Truly,” said the
Lord Protector, “I have, as before God, often thought that I could not
tell what my business was, nor what I was in the place I stood in, save
comparing myself to a good constable, to keep the peace of the parish.”
Cromwell’s pre-eminent ability sufficed to ward off the Restoration,
while he lived. But the same spirit of faith that in seasons of
greatest peril ‘shone in him like a pillar of fire,’ did not fail in
evil days to sustain and animate those who had been his companions in
the camp and the senate-house. Evil days indeed there were to come,
for though the transition itself was accomplished without bloodshed,
the old leaders were not suffered to escape, The new king, before he
left Holland, published a proclamation, commanding his father’s judges
to surrender themselves up within fourteen days, on pain of being
excepted from any pardon or indemnity either as to their lives or
estates. Ludlow, putting no faith in royal promises, escaped in time
to the continent; his gravestone stands in the churchyard at Vevay,
overlooking the Lake of Geneva, near which he lived on long enough to
hear that the Revolution was consummated by the accession of William
and Mary, though even then he found his presence was not tolerated in
his country. Hutchinson, who surrendered upon the proclamation, died in
prison in the course of a few months from the effects of confinement
and bad air. Marten, after twenty years’ imprisonment, died an old man
of seventy-eight at Chepstow Castle, in Monmouthshire (1681). Through
all his sufferings he never regretted what he had done. We are told
that towards the end of his life, he was allowed to take walks with his
guard beyond the castle walls. An inhabitant of a neighbouring village
used to ask him to rest in his house, and one day put the critical
question, whether, supposing the deed were to be done over again, he
would again sign the king’s death-warrant. The stern old regicide lost
his entry to the house by his indomitable “Yes.” The blind Milton
suffered with the friends whose cause his pen had so ably defended. His
losses he regretted no more than he had regretted the loss of the eyes
he sacrificed in writing his defence of the king’s execution against
the attack of Salmasius--
Cyriac, this three years’ day these eyes, though clear
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear;
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In liberty’s defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world’s vain mask
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.[261]
%THE RESTORATION--REVENGE.%
Nine of the king’s judges were executed as traitors, besides Cook,
the solicitor at the High Court of Justice, Hacker and Axtell, the
commanders of the guard on the day of the execution, and Hugh Peters,
the Independent minister, through whose good offices Juxon had been
allowed to attend the king during his last hours. They all died
bravely, expressing confidence in the justice of their cause. Amongst
their judges sat the Presbyterians, Denzil Hollis and the Earl of
Manchester; the Independent, Lord Say-and-Sele; and even Monk himself,
now Marquis of Albemarle, and Sir Antony Ashley Cooper, afterwards Earl
of Shaftesbury, both of whom had been leading members of the government
under the protectorate, but were now trying to efface the memories of
their own acts by the severity of the measures they dealt to their old
friends and accomplices. Well might Lord Fairfax indignantly exclaim,
that ‘if any man must be excepted, he knew no man that deserved it
more than himself, who was the general of the army at the time.’ Not
satisfied with wreaking their vengeance upon the living, the Royalists
insulted the remains of the dead. The remains of the historian May,
the two victorious admirals, Blake and Popham, the great constitutional
statesman, John Pym, and even those of the protector’s mother, and his
daughter, Lady Claypole, were torn out of their graves in Westminster
Abbey, and flung together into a pit near the back-door of one of the
prebendaries’ houses at Westminster; while the bodies of Bradshaw, of
Ireton, and of Cromwell himself, the greatest ruler that England ever
produced, were dragged to Tyburn and there hanged on gibbets.
%EXECUTION OF VANE.%
But of all the enormities of the Restoration, the most iniquitous was
the trial and execution of Sir Henry Vane. Charles and Hyde, now Lord
Chancellor Clarendon, had obtained the exception of Vane’s name out
of the Act of Indemnity, as passed by the Convention Parliament, by
promising that if he were attainted, his sentence should be remitted.
In 1662, that Parliament had given place to one more reactionary and
more sanguinary; the ruse had served its turn; and while renegades
obtained life and pardon by giving false witness against the living and
defaming the dead, the noble Republican statesman was accused of high
treason against Charles II. for having exercised civil and military
functions under the usurping government. A law of Henry VII., drawing
a distinction between the king _de facto_ and the king _de jure_, had
assured indemnity to all persons who obeyed the king for the time being
on the throne. Vane, therefore, could fairly defend himself by arguing
that the Parliament being the government for the time being, there
was no treason in acting under it, since this law limited the word
‘king’ in the statute of treasons to a king actually on the throne,
and declared, in fact, there could be no treason in acting against
one who was merely king _de jure_. He also pleaded the undoubted fact
that he had opposed the act of the regicides at the time, and refused
approbation afterwards. He was not, however, suffered to escape because
law and justice were on his side. The chief justice was reported to
have said, “Though we know not what to say to him, we know what to
do with him.” The court decided that Charles II. had been king _de
facto_ as well as _de jure_ from the moment of his father’s death,
though “kept out of the exercise of his royal authority by traitors
and rebels.” Vane heard with composure that the Restoration was to be
consummated by his death. “This dark night and black shade,” he wrote
to his wife, “which God hath drawn over His work in the midst of us,
may be, for aught we know, the ground-colour to some beautiful piece
that He is now exposing to the light.” True to his principles, he
ascribed his country’s calamities to the imperfections of himself and
her ministers, and gloried in his trial as a means of showing how death
may be contemned by him who suffers in a good cause. “Ten thousand
deaths,” he said to his friends, “rather than defile my conscience, the
chastity and purity of which I value beyond all the world! I would not
for ten thousand lives part with this peace and satisfaction I have
in my own heart, both in holding to the purity of my principles and
to the righteousness of this good cause, and to the assurance I have
that God is now fulfilling all these great and precious promises, in
order to what He is bringing forth. Although I see it not, yet I die
in the faith and assured expectation of it.” On the day of execution,
Tower Hill and the roofs of the neighbouring houses were crowded with
spectators. When Vane attempted to address them, the trumpets were
ordered to blow, in fear of the impression his last words might make.
“It is a bad cause,” he said, “which cannot bear the words of a dying
man.” His last words at the block were: “Father, glorify Thy servant in
the sight of men, that he may glorify Thee in the discharge of his duty
to Thee and to his country.” The crowd dispersed awe-struck, regarding
his constancy as a “miracle.” “He was great in all his actions, but to
me he seemed greatest in his sufferings,” wrote a friend of his family;
while a Royalist present at the scene remarked that “the king lost more
by that man’s death than he will get again for a good while.” Such was
the death of the great English stoic, a fitting close to the history of
an heroic age.
FOOTNOTES:
[253] Clar. State Papers, iii. 408.
[254] Guizot, Richard Cromwell, i. 54, 293.
[255] King’s Tracts.
[256] Markham, Fairfax, 381
[257] Macaulay, I. ch. i.
[258] Contemptu famæ contemni virtutes.--Tac.
[259] Carl., iii. 189.
[260] Torture, though always illegal, was used to a great extent during
the rule of the Tudors and the two first Stuarts. In the single year
1581 there are no less than six warrants entered in the Council Book.
It was possible for persons to obtain, as a favour, warrants from the
king or the council, to sanction, even in ordinary criminal cases,
the illegal employment of torture, so that murder, embezzlement,
and horse-stealing are found amongst the imputed offences for which
torture is to be used. Since the end of Elizabeth’s reign no instances
have been found of its application to other than State crimes. The
last warrant issued was in 1640, the year of the meeting of the Long
Parliament. “In the days of the prerogative,” says Jardine, “Magna
Charta was an empty name, and trial by jury a mockery and a farce,
when, upon the authority of a royal warrant, a man could be carried
away to the prisons of the Tower, and after his body had been duly
attenuated, and his spirit broken and subdued by the horrors of ‘Little
Ease’ and the ‘Dungeon among the rats,’ be brought into court to make
a formal answer to evidence extracted by the cruelties of the rack, or
the manacles, or the ‘scavenger’s daughter.’” The use of torture was
not abolished in Scotland till 1708; in France till 1789; in Russia
till 1801; in Hanover till 1822; in Baden till 1831.--Jardine on the
Use of Torture.
[261] Taine, Hist. of English Literature, i. 419, attributes the sonnet
to this time, but it manifestly belongs to an earlier date. The great
French scholar, Claude Saumaise, or, as he is more common! called,
Salmasius, wrote a Latin treatise in defence of the divine right of
kings, and in vindication of the memory of Charles I. (1649.) Milton
wrote an answer to the _Defensio Regia_, also in Latin (1651). He had
lost the sight of one eye in 1651, and became totally blind not long
afterwards. His enemies taunted him with his blindness as being a
judgment for having written in defence of the king’s death, He lived on
for fourteen years after the Restoration.
APPENDIX.
_Page 48._--The story of the meeting of Pym and Strafford told by Dr.
James Welwood in his “History of the Last Hundred Years preceding
the Revolution in 1688.” More authentic illustrations of the close
connection of Wentworth with the popular leaders before his acceptance
of office are to be found in the Strafford Letters and Despatches.
While Eliot was confined in the Tower, Lord Cottingdon wrote to
Wentworth in Ireland that his ‘old dear friend, Sir John Eliot, is
very like to die.’ Again, Laud, in one of his letters to Wentworth,
communicates the following piece of intelligence: “When we came to
this passage in your despatch, ‘Again, I did beseech them to look well
about, and to be wise by others’ harms, they were not ignorant of the
misfortunes these meetings’ [i.e., Parliaments] ‘had run in England
of late years,’ here a good friend of yours interposed, ‘_Quorum pars
magna fui._’” “It pierces my heart,” says Strafford himself on his
trial, “though not with guilt, yet with sorrow, that in my gray hairs
I should be so much misunderstood by the companions of my youth, with
whom I have formerly spent so much time.” Wentworth’s contemporaries
certainly considered him as an apostate. An attempt has recently been
made (Quarterly Review, April, 1874), to defend him from the charge.
The article bears evidence of most careful research, and the writer
certainly shows that in the Parliament of 1628, Wentworth differed
from Eliot on details as to the best means to be employed in securing
the liberty of the subject, but does not prove that he differed about
the end in view. The main facts remain that Wentworth was imprisoned
in 1627 for resisting a forced loan, that he was returned to the
Parliament of 1628 as an extreme advocate of popular rights in the
teeth of an opposition from the court, which made his supporters afraid
to disclose their names. Wentworth’s speeches in this Parliament, as
quoted in the article itself, seem to tell their own tale. “I cannot
forget the duty I owe to my country, and unless we be secured in
our liberties, we cannot give (any supplies);” again he wished the
committee “to draw into a law what may assure us of our liberty of our
persons and propriety of our goods before we report the resolution
of our gift;” and further, “some character must be put upon it (this
law), and the council must not on every occasion leap out of it.
Therefore, let some penalty be set on the violators thereof.” When
the king promised to observe Magna Charta, and to govern according to
the laws and statutes of the realm, and wished Parliament to give up
the proposed bill and trust to this declaration, Wentworth persevered
against the king’s express wish, and proposed to “confirm Magna Charta
and those other laws, _together with the king’s declarations_,” by the
objectionable bill. This was the man who became the king’s minister
without conditions, the chief enemy of popular rights, and the advocate
of the policy of Thorough.
_Page 69._--Out of the twelve judges, two only, Hutton and Croke,
decided in favour of Hampden on the ground of principle, viz., the
illegality of the tax. Denham, who was very ill, gave a short written
judgment, expressing no opinion on the legality of the tax, but
deciding in favour of Hampden on technical grounds, viz., that the
action was brought in the wrong form. Bramston and Davenport both
agreed that in time of danger the king had the power of levying the
tax, and that he was sole judge of the danger. Like Denham, however,
they gave judgment in favour of Hampden on technical grounds, viz.,
that it was impossible to give judgment for the king, because the writs
issued to the sheriff for levying the tax did not state to whom the
money was due. The trial took place during the months of November and
December, 1637, but some of the judges did not deliver their opinions
till after the following Easter. The judgment of the majority, as that
of the court, was delivered against Hampden, 12th June, 1638.
Ib. Cadmean [or suicidal] victory, see Hdt. i. 116.
_Page 70._--12th December, 1638. Address of Anthony Champeney, dean of
the secular Catholic clergy in England, exhorting them to pray for the
king’s success against the Scots. (From Clar. MSS. in Bodleian, No.
1158. Copy by Windebank.)
“Dearly beloved Brethren,--Though I doubt not but that you daily
present your humble and earnest prayers unto Almighty God for his
Majesty, according to St. Paul his exhortation in these words: Obsecro
fieri orationes pro Regibus et omnibus qui in sublimitate sunt, ut
quietam et tranquillam vitam agamus in omni pietate et castitate,
hoc enim bonum est, et acceptum coram Salvatore nostro Deo; yet,
considering these broken times, I could not admit at this present to
stir you up now earnestly to the performance of this your duty towards
your sovereign, wishing you all and every one of you to exhort the
Catholics with whom you converse, and you also yourselves, to have more
frequent recourse to Almighty God by prayer, for the peace and quietude
of his Majesty’s dominions in these general troubles of all Europe,
and for the prosperity of his Majesty, the Queen, and all the royal
issue, begging of Almighty God in their behalfs that which the prophet
Baruch did for the king and prince under whom he lived, ‘ut sint dies
eorum sicut dies cæli super terram, et ut det Dominus virtutem nobis,
ut illuminet oculos nostros et vivamus sub umbra eorum et serviamus eis
multis diebus.’ And also that their subjects may be indued with the
spirit of dutiful submission and obedience, for as St. Paul teacheth
us, ‘Non est potestas nisi a Deo, itaque qui resistit potestati, Dei
ordinationi resistit. Qui autem resistunt, ipsi sibi damnationem
acquirunt.’
“Considering the reports which are spread abroad concerning the
discontented humours of some of his Majesty’s subjects in Scotland,
although I hope they are not so bad as the general voice doth make
them, yet in regard that good subjects cannot be too zealous in that
which concerneth his Majesty’s service, I do earnestly entreat you all
to exhort, move, and insist seriously with the Catholics that as the
religion which they profess doth teach them next after God to honour
and serve their Prince, and as they themselves have always professed
to be ready to lay their lands and goods at his Majesty’s feet, in
witness of their allegiance and loyalty towards him, so they would
at this present, of their own accord, without expecting to be called
on, endeavour and think of some means, every one according to his
hability, to make an efficacious and real expression of the same, to
the end that his Majesty may understand that if he should have use of
them, they are ready in all occurrences that may fall out to serve to
the utmost, both with their fortunes and persons, according as his
Majesty shall please to command or accept of their service in that
kind.”
_Page 83._--Cromwell was already known to the government as a supporter
of popular rights. The municipal government of the town of Huntingdon,
Cromwell’s birthplace, had been vested in a body of bailiffs and
burgesses elected annually by the residents. By a new charter this body
was changed to a mayor, alderman, and recorder, all elected for life.
The people opposed the change, and were supported by Oliver Cromwell,
who used some strong language against the new mayor and new recorder.
The council was appealed to, and a messenger was despatched to
Huntingdon with a warrant for the apprehension of Oliver Cromwell, who,
on the 26th Nov., 1630, was brought before the lords of the council.
After five days’ detention, the case was gone into, and ‘both sides had
a long hearing,’ but it was finally referred to the Lord Privy Seal,
the Earl of Manchester, who owned Hinchinbrook in the neighbourhood
of Huntingdon, until lately the residence of Sir Oliver Cromwell, the
uncle of the future protector. Manchester’s report is as follows:
“Whereas it pleased your lordships to refer unto me the differences
in the town of Huntingdon about the renovation of their charter,
and some wrongs done to Mr. Mayor of Huntingdon, and Mr. Barnard, a
counsellor-at-law [the recorder] by disgraceful and unseemly speeches
used of them by Mr. Cromwell of Huntingdon.... I have heard the said
differences, and do find those supposed fears of prejudice that might
be to the said town by their late altered charter, are causeless and
ill-grounded, and the endeavour used to gain many of the burgesses
against this new corporation was very indirect and unfit, and such as
I could not but much blame them that stirred in it. For Mr. Barnard’s
carriage of the business in advising and obtaining the charter, it was
fair and orderly done, being authorised by common consent of the town
to do the same, and the thing effected by him tends much to the good
and grace of the town.... For the words spoken of Mr. Mayor and Mr.
Barnard by Mr. Cromwell, as they were ill, so they are acknowledged to
be spoken in heat and passion, and desired to be forgotten; and I found
Mr. Cromwell very willing to hold friendship with Mr. Barnard, who with
a good-will remitted the unkind passages past and entertained the same.
So I left all parties reconciled, and wished them to join hereafter in
things that may be for the common good and peace of the town.
“December 6th, 1630. “H. MANCHESTER.”
A few months after the earl’s award, Cromwell sold his property at
Huntingdon, and removed to St. Ives.--Calendar of State Papers,
1629-1631.
_Page 84._--Browning’s Strafford I., i. The words are put in the
younger Vane’s mouth.
_Page 98._--Wentworth obtained from Charles enlarged powers for
himself, as President of the Court of the North. A judge of assize
acted in opposition to them, whereupon Wentworth wrote from Ireland to
Lord Cottingdon as follows:
“I do most humbly beseech this judge may be convened at the Council
Board, and charged with these two great misdemeanors ... and I am a
most earnest suitor to his Majesty and their lordships, that he be not
admitted to go that circuit hereafter; and indeed I do most earnestly
beseech his Majesty by you, that we may be troubled no more with such
a peevish indiscreet piece of flesh. I confess I disdain to see the
gownmen in this sort hang their noses over the flowers of the crown,
blow and snuffle upon them till they take both scent and beauty off
them; or to have them put such a prejudice upon all other sorts of
men, as if none were able or worthy to be intrusted with honour and
administration of justice but themselves.”--Strafford, Letters and
Despatches, i. 129.
Following Wentworth’s advice, Charles agreed to bestow upon the Lord
Chief Justice and Lord Chief Baron of Ireland four shillings in the £
out of the first yearly rent raised upon the commission of defective
titles. “Now,” wrote Wentworth, “they do intend it with a care and
diligence such as if it were their own private. And most certain the
gaining themselves every four shillings once paid will better your
revenue for ever after at least five pounds.”--Ib., ii. 41.
“It is plain, indeed, that the opinion delivered by the judges,
declaring the lawfulness of the assignment for the shipping is the
greatest service that profession have done the crown in my time. But
unless his majesty hath the like power declared to raise a land army
upon the same exigent of State, the crown seems to me to stand upon
one leg at home, to be considerable but by halves to foreign princes
abroad. Yet sure this methinks convinces a power for the sovereign to
raise payments for land forces, ... and if by degrees Scotland and
Ireland be drawn to contribute their proportions to these levies for
the public, _omne tulit punctum_ ... this piece well fortified for ever
vindicates the royalty at home from under the restraints of subjects
... settles an authority and right in the crown to levies of that
nature, which thread draws after it many huge and great advantages more
proper to be thought on at some other seasons than now.”--Ib., ii. 62.
A description of Wentworth, written by Sir Thomas Roe to Elizabeth,
wife of the Elector Palatine.
“My Lord Deputy of Ireland doth great wonders and governs like a king,
and hath taught that kingdom to show an example of envy by having
Parliaments and knowing wisely how to use them; for they have given
the king six subsidies, which will arise to £24,000, and they are
like to have the liberty we contended for, and grace from his Majesty
worth their gift double; and which is worth more, the honour of good
intelligence and love between the king and his people, which I would
to God our great wits had had eyes to see. This is a great service,
and, to give your Majesty a character of the man--he is severe abroad
and in business, and sweet in private conversation; retired in his
friendships, but very firm; a terrible judge, and a strong enemy; a
servant violently zealous in his master’s ends, and not negligent of
his own; one that will have what he will, and though of great reason,
he can make his will greater, when it may serve him; affecting glory
by a seeming contempt; one that cannot stay long in the middle region
of fortune, but _entreprenant_: but will either be the greatest man in
England, or much less than he is; lastly, one that may--and his nature
lies fit for it, for he is ambitious to do what others will not--do
your Majesty very great service, if you can make him.”
_Page 107._--The decision of the question was deferred by a vote, which
was carried, ‘that this declaration shall not be printed without a
particular order of the House.’
_Page 139._--“A feat repeated by their Breton brethren at La
Vendée.”--See Alison’s History of Europe, iii. 326, 342, 365.
_Page 181._--Richard Symonds, a Royalist officer, and Sir Edward
Walker, Garter-king at arms, both of whom were with the royal army,
give the following account of the storming of Leicester:
On Thursday (29th May), the royal army sat down before the city. On
Friday (30th May), Rupert raised a battery and sent a trumpeter to
demand surrender. No satisfactory answer being returned, he caused the
battery to play, which by six o’clock made a great breach in the wall.
Between twelve and two o’clock at night the town was stormed and taken.
Symonds says the garrison was 600 men; Walker, that officers, soldiers,
and townsmen in arms together amounted to 1200. Walker says the town
was ‘miserably sacked,’ as do Symonds and Sprigge; but Sprigge’s
account of the siege lasting four days seems wrong.
_Page 203._--Milton’s sonnet.--Edwards wrote “Reason against
Independence and Toleration” (1641).
_Page 221._--Morrice, chaplain to Lord Broghill, tells the well-known
story how Cromwell and Ireton, in the disguise of troopers, found a
letter of the king’s to the queen, concealed in a saddle. He heard the
story from Lord Broghill, who had heard it from Cromwell. Morrice says
that in the letter “the king acquainted the queen that he was courted
by both factions, the Scotch Presbyterians and the army, and which
bid fairest for him should have him; but he thought he should close
with the Scots sooner than the other” (Morrice’s Life of Broghill,
prefixed to Orrery State Letters, 1743). The contents of the letter
are usually taken from Richardson’s account of a conversation he had
with Lord Bolingbroke. “Lord Bolingbroke told us” [i.e., Pope and
Richardson] (12th June, 1742), “that Lord Oxford had often told him
that he had seen and had in his hand an original letter that Charles
I. wrote to the queen, ‘that she might be entirely easy as to whatever
concessions he should make, for that he should know in due time how to
deal with the rogues’” [i.e., Cromwell and the others], “‘who, instead
of a silken garter should be fitted with an hempen cord.’” Richardson
merely says that those concerned awaited and intercepted the letter,
without specifying persons or place. (Richardsoniana, by the late
Jonathan Richardson, jun., 1776).
_Page 242._ _Sigebehrt_, King of Wessex, deposed (755) by his
successor, Cenwulf, and the West Saxon Witan; _Æthelred_ the Second
(the Unready), deposed in favour of the invader, Swegen, (1013), and
restored (1014). _Harthacnut_ deposed from his West Saxon kingdom,
while still uncrowned, because he insisted on remaining in Denmark
(1037): afterwards re-elected to the whole kingdom of England (1040).
See Freeman’s Norman Conquest, i. p. 105, 358, 498.
Kemble’s fifth canon is, ‘The Witan had the power to depose the king,
if his government was not conducted for the good of his people.’
Mr. Stubbs, however, limits the cases of real deposition to the
Heptarchic period, a time of unexampled civil anarchy. The instances
which he quotes in this period besides Sigebehrt of Wessex are among
the Northumbrian kings. _Alcred_ or Ealhred (774) deposed ‘by the
counsel and consent of his own people,’ i.e., by the Witenagemot: his
predecessor, _Ethelwald_, deposed at Wincenheale, the meeting-place of
the Northumbrian councils (765); _Ethelred_ displaced 779, restored
790, and ‘murdered six years later by equally competent authority.’ The
fall of Ethelred the Unready he distinguishes as the result of defeat,
and notices that the action of the Witan was more concerned with his
restoration than with his deposition.--Stubbs’ Const. History, i. p.
138.
_Pages 274, 275._--For an excellent account of the times, see Sir W.
Scott’s Fortunes of Nigel, chap. i., and for Alsatia, ib. xvi., xvii.
_Page 338._--Copies of Letters of Intelligence, from MSS. in Bodleian.
“4th April, 1653, N.S.
“It was debated in the House a fortnight ago whether we should
send an ambassador for Holland or no; they seemed much divided
about it.... The same day the House debated this, the council
of officers at St. James’ had resolved to turn them out, and
to have shut up the House doors, had not the general and Col.
Desborough interceded, who asked them if they destroyed that
Parliament, what they should call themselves, a State they could
not be. They answered that they would call a new Parliament. Then
says the general, the Parliament is not the supreme power, but
that is the supreme power that calls it, and besides the House
is now endeavouring a treaty with Holland (which is the only way
that we have left for the destroying of the combination of our
enemies, both at home and beyond sea), and if we destroy them,
neither Holland nor any other State will enter into a treaty with
us. This seemed to satisfy them at present, but they have met
since, and are framing a petition.”
“May, 1653.
“I will not trouble you with the names of our new Council of
State, nor with the proclamation subscribed by the general,
because they are in print. The people generally entertain and
acquiesce in it, yet in the army are some divisions about it,
and there is a party which menace a second purgation because
some persons have been refused to sit at the helm whom they
propounded. Our general is very sedulous to give satisfaction to
all parties, and after he hath made a peace with Holland (which,
if once they treat we doubt not of), he will cement all other
differences. He is very kind to the old malignant party, and
some have found much more favour since the late dissolution than
in seven years’ solicitation before. This hath been effected
by the Court of Articles, where the honour of the army is much
concerned. Mr. Bradshaw is president, who checked a councillor at
that bar for saying the Parliament was dissolved, which many of
the members will not acknowledge, terming it only a disturbance.”
_Page 290._--“Copperspath” (_i.e._ Cobburn’s-path) is Cromwell’s
version of the Scotch Cockburn’s-path.
INDEX.
Act of Settlement, 6;
of Settlement for Ireland, 342;
of Supremacy, 9;
of Uniformity, 10;
for triennial Parliaments, 99, 375;
rendering Long Parliament indissoluble but by its own consent, 100,
315;
abolishing illegal courts, 101;
excluding ecclesiastics from civil office, 102, 108, 115;
Navigation, 300;
for conducting law proceedings in English, 312
Amboyna, 253, 331
America, 75, 253, 254
Anabaptists, 204, 303, 330
Areopagitica, 207
Argyle, Duke of, 227, 230
Armada, Spanish, 13
Armour, 125, 126
Army remodelled, 178, 214, 217, 220, 224, 236, 371, 373
Ascham, 278
Ashburnham, John, 222
Assembly, of Divines, 150, 154, 195, 203;
of Peers, 81
Astley, Sir Jacob, 193
Austria, 22, 65
Bacon, Sir Francis, 252, 262, 306
Balfour, 108
Barbadoes, 335
Bastwick, 73, 86
Batten, Admiral, 134
Baxter, 32
Berkeley, Judge, 85
Berkley, 222
Berwick, Pacification of, 78
Bill, Dissolution, 313;
for command of militia, 114;
bishops’ exclusion, 114
Bills of Attainder, 91, 96, 98
Birch, Colonel, 233
Bishops, 11, 108, 109, 114
Blake, Admiral, 190, 296, 300-302, 317, 322, 339, 354, 356, 384
Booth, Sir George, 370
Bradshaw, 238, 239, 384
Brentford, 132
Bristol, 139, 248
Broghill, Lord, 304, 363
Brook, Robert Greville, Lord, 132
Brownists, 204
Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, 27-34, 40, 43, 45
Burton, 73, 86
Byron, Lord, 146
Cadiz, 33, 356
Calais, 353, 359
Calvert, Sir John, 19
Casaubon, Meric, 340
Catholics, 69, 70, 151, 312, 341. See Appendix
Cecil, Sir Edward, 33
Chambers, 59, 86
Charles I. visits Spain, 27;
marriage treaty broken off, 28;
refuses assent to Tonnage and Poundage Bill, 31;
lends ships to Louis XIII., 32;
imprisons managers of Buckingham’s impeachment, 36;
war with France, 37;
demands general loan, 38, 39;
answers to Petition of Right, 42, 43, 47;
proclamation of, against Parliament, 50;
education and character, 51;
love of art, 256;
court of, 29, 53;
arbitrary government of, 54, 59;
attempts to establish Episcopacy in Scotland, 76, 78;
foreign policy of, 78;
summons Assembly of Peers, 80;
conduct towards Strafford, 84, 96, 97;
assents to Army Plot, 94;
concessions in Scotland, 103;
suspected of complicity in Irish rebellion, 104, 105;
reaction in favour of, 106, 107;
guard at Whitehall, 108;
attempts to seize five members, 110, 111;
visits Guildhall, 112;
prepares for war, 114;
consents to Bishops’ Exclusion Bill, 115;
refuses Militia Bill, 116;
refused admittance into Hull, 116;
rejects York propositions, 118;
raises standard, 119;
deceit, cause of war, 120;
at Edgehill, 124-131;
attacks Brentford, 132;
classes on side of, 134;
answer to Oxford propositions, 136;
success of forces, 139, 141;
besieges Gloucester, 142;
at Newbury, 145;
habits of troops, 148, 158;
cessation of arms with Irish, 158;
Oxford Parliament, 157;
defeats Waller, 160;
forces Essex to surrender, 167-169;
at Newbury, 172;
breaks off Uxbridge negotiations, 177;
at Naseby, 186;
letters published, 187;
treaty with Irish Catholics, 191, 192;
goes to Scotch camp, 193;
rejects Newcastle propositions, 197;
removed from Holmby by Joyce, 215, 217;
rejects army propositions, 219;
flies to Isle of Wight, 222;
treaty with Scots, 225;
concessions at Newport, 235;
hesitates to escape, 236;
trial and execution, 238-247. See Appendix.
Charles Louis, elector palatine, 306, 353
Chillingworth, 211
Church, Episcopalian, 9-13, 20, 40, 69-75, 102, 150;
Presbyterian, 10, 75, 202;
Independent, 12, 195
Christine, Queen of Sweden, 35
Claypole, Lady Elizabeth, 364, 384
Clubmen, 188
Colchester, 227, 330
Colepepper, 106, 109, 181, 187
Colonies, 75, 251-254, 296
Companies, 250, 253
_Confirmatio Chartarum_, 1
Confiscations, 212, 233, 309
Cooper, Sir Antony Ashley, 388
Copyholders, 3, 267
Cotton, Sir Robert, 255
Council, King’s, 7, 17, 101
Court, of Admiralty, 19;
of Chancery, 6, 318-320, 332;
of Exchequer, 6, 68, 74;
of King’s Bench, 16, 39, 57;
of the North, 58;
of High Commission, 7, 16, 72, 101;
of Star Chamber, 7, 15, 59, 73, 74, 101, 267
Courts of Common Law, 6, 317-320;
High Courts of Justice, 238, 307 Covenant, Scotch, 77;
Solemn League and, 153
Covenanters, Scotch, 77-80, 227, 285, 291
Cromwell, Henry, 337, 346
Cromwell, Oliver, member for Huntingdon, 41;
for Cambridge, 83;
leader of Independents, 102;
lieutenant-general of eastern counties’ army, 155;
character of troops, 156;
at Marston Moor, 163-166;
quarrels with Manchester, 173;
supports Self-denying Ordinance, 174;
lieutenant-general of remodelled army, 182;
at Naseby, 185;
in west, 188;
character and appearance, 209, 210, 341, 366;
views of settlement, 216, 218, 221, 224, 226;
suppresses mutinies in army, 224, 281;
defeats Scots at Preston, 228-230;
supports execution of king, 238, 246;
in Ireland, 281-284;
commander-in-chief of army, 285;
in Scotland, 287;
at Dunbar, 288-290;
at Worcester, 292-295;
political views of, 303-313;
expels Long Parliament, 314;
summons Barebone’s Parliament, 316;
protector, 227;
ideal of government, 229;
plots against, 330, 351, 363;
reform of Church, 331;
of Chancery, 332, 340;
quarrels with Parliaments, 334, 348, 361;
rules arbitrarily, 336;
moderation of, 337-339;
urges reforms of law, 340;
encourages learning, 260, 340, 377;
toleration of, 341-343;
refuses title of king, 350;
foreign policy of, 331, 352-359;
protects Vaudois, 358;
economy of government, 360;
friends of government, 363;
illness and death, 364-366. See Appendix.
Cromwell, Richard, 367-369
Cropredy Bridge, 159
Customs, 15, 31, 157, 251
Davenant, Sir William, 260
Dean, Admiral, 296, 325
Debtors, 323
Denmark, 331
De Ruyter, 325
Desborough, 328, 336, 369, 370
Digby, Lord, 188
Dorislaus, Dr., 278
Dragoons, 125
Drogheda, 282
Dunbar, 288-290
Dunkirk, 353, 356, 357, 363
Edgehill, 126-131
_Eikôn Basilikê_, 278
Eliot, Sir John, 18, 19, 35, 50, 56, 57, 255
Elizabeth, Queen, government of, 8-14
Elizabeth of Bohemia, 14, 22
Engagers, 230, 291
Erastians, 200
Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of, 94, 118, 128, 130, 133, 137, 141,
143, 145-147, 159, 167, 168, 212
Excise, 158
Exports, 253
Fairfax, Lord Ferdinando, 161
Fairfax, Lady, 239
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 117, 161, 163, 180, 213, 215, 223, 227, 231,
233, 238, 244, 259, 280, 332, 372, 383
Falkland, Sir Lucius Cary, Lord, 82, 83, 103, 106, 110, 117, 136,
146, 255
Fauconberg, Lord, 357
Felton, 44
Fiennes, Nathaniel, 119, 139
Fifth-Monarchists, 204, 303, 330
Finch, Sir John, 49, 66, 85
Fleetwood, 190, 292, 328, 336, 344, 369
Fox, George, 343
France, 3, 38, 298, 353, 356, 359, 380, 381
Frederic, Prince of the Palatinate, 14, 21, 23, 25
Freeholders, 2, 121, 134, 264, 266
Glamorgan, Lord Herbert, Earl of, 190, 255
Gloucester, 143
Goring, Colonel, 163, 165, 181, 187
Government, three functions of, 1-6. See Appendix
Grenville, Sir Richard, 167, 181, 187
Gustavus Adolphus, 66
_Habeas Corpus_, writ of, 15, 16, 101
Hale, Sir Matthew, 339
Hamilton, James, Duke of, 227, 229, 307
Hammond, 222
Hampden, John, 68, 91, 107, 110, 113, 114, 119, 128, 130, 137, 138,
149
Harlech Castle, 212
Haslerig, Sir Arthur, 110, 119, 288, 308, 361
Henrietta Maria, 53, 64, 93, 97, 105, 111, 115, 158, 176, 196, 236
Heyworth Moor, 117
Highlanders, 170
Hobbes, 211, 340
Holland, 252, 253, 299, 300; war with, 301, 302, 325, 331, 361
Hollis, Denzil, 49, 106, 119, 383
Hopton, Sir Ralph, 122, 139
Hotham, Sir John, 135
Howard, Lord, of Esrick, 310
Huguenots, 37, 40, 44-46
Huntingdon, Major-General, 231
Hutchinson, Colonel, 190, 203, 208, 245, 259, 382
Hyde, Edward, 82, 103, 106, 109, 113,
117, 181, 191, 258, 346, 351, 384
Impeachment, 34, 35, 37, 84, 85, 110
Imports, 253
Independents, 102, 154, 167, 195, 201,
234
India, 251, 253
Instrument of Government, 326
Ireland, 61, 63, 64, 104, 156, 278, 281-284, 316, 333, 345, 375
Irish troops, 157, 170
Ireton, Henry, 183, 185, 190, 209, 217, 219, 221, 230, 235, 237, 243,
245, 284, 304, 384
Ironsides, 156, 164, 166
Jamaica, 355
James I., government of, 14-28, 257, 262
Jermyn, Lord, 258
Jews, 343
Jones, Inigo, 256
Joyce, Cornet, 215
Judges, 6, 44, 68, 83, 323, 339
‘Killing no murder,’ 351
King, General, 163
Labourers, 270
Lamb, Dr., 41
Lambert, 289, 292, 368, 370, 372
Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 59, 72-75, 85, 178
Law, English common, 317-320, 339;
martial, 40;
see _Act, Ordinance_
Leeds, 248
Leicester, 181. See Appendix
Lenthall, William, 112, 219, 370
Leslie, Alexander, Earl of Leven, 157, 161, 164, 165, 167
Leslie, David, 161, 287-290, 291-295
Levellers, 221, 223, 235, 245, 280, 335, 337, 350
Lilburne, John, 78, 86, 221, 234, 307
Lindsey, Earl of, 128, 130
Loans, 5, 38, 39
Lockhart, 339, 357
London, 113, 117, 131-133, 135, 140, 151, 216, 220, 226, 248, 251,
272-275, 371
Lords, House of, 2, 117, 177, 238, 277, 349, 360, 373
Louis XIII., 33, 37, 78
Louis XIV., 298, 356, 357
Lunsford, Colonel, 107
Ludlow, Edmund, 190, 208, 219, 226, 336, 346, 382
Magna Charta, 2
Major-generals, 336, 349
Manchester, Edward Montague, Earl of, 110, 129, 155, 172, 174, 383
Manchester, 247
Mardyke, 356, 357
Marston Moor, 161-167
Marten, Sir Henry, Judge of Admiralty, 6
Marten, Henry, son of Judge, 152, 313, 382
Massey, 142
Maurice, Prince, 14, 119, 135, 139, 296
Mazarin, Cardinal, 193, 357
Mercantile system, 350
_Mercurius Aulicus_, 149
Militia, 114, 116, 118
Milton, John, 75, 132, 200, 203, 206-208, 259, 296, 328, 339, 346,
358, 377, 383
Monopolies, 55, 67, 249
Monk, General, 291, 301, 304, 317, 325, 371-373, 376, 383
Montreuil, M. de, 193
Montrose, Marquis of, 170, 176, 189, 195, 285
Mountnorris, Lord, 64
Naseby, 182-186
Naylor, 343, 348, 350
Newcastle, Marquis of, 134, 141, 158, 160, 163, 165, 167
Newbury, 143-147, 173
Newspapers, 100, 149, 208, 336
Noy, 66
Nutt, Captain, 19
Ordinance, Self-Denying, 175, 177;
for remodelling army, 175;
for new Prayer-book, 202;
for establishment of Presbyterian Church, 202;
for suppression of blasphemies and heresies, 203;
forbidding use of Prayer-book, 204;
for High Court of Justice, 238;
forbidding Episcopalian ministers to act as chaplains or
schoolmasters, 336;
for reform of Chancery, 332, 340;
for union of England and Scotland, 344
Ordinances or proclamations made in council, 5;
for suppression of vice and observance of Sundays, 151;
for reform of Church, 331;
for restraining unlicensed printing, 152, 207, 208
Ormond, Duke of, 156, 190, 190, 195, 235, 281, 363
Oxenstiern, 330
Oxford, 133, 135, 157, 158
Palatinate, 22, 353
Parliament, privileges of, 25, 232;
classes represented in, 2, 3, 333;
character of, in seventeenth century, 100;
_of 1621_, 24;
_of 1625_, 30-32;
_of 1626_, Buckingham impeached, 35;
_of 1628_, Petition of Right, 41-43;
_session of 1629_, 48, 49;
_Short Parliament of 1640_, 79;
_Long Parliament_, meeting of, 83;
proceedings against Strafford, 84, 87-93, 97;
against delinquents, 83, 85;
votes Scots £300,000, 94;
reforms of, 99, 101;
religious parties in, 102;
debates on Grand Remonstrance, 106;
five members impeached, 110;
sits in Guildhall, 113;
a war council, 117;
constitutional attitude of, 122;
classes on side of, 121, 133;
peace party in, 135;
peace propositions of Lords, 140;
petitioned by mobs, 140;
parties in, 152;
armies of, 157;
quarrels with army, 212-214;
yields to army, 216;
intimidated by Presbyterian mob, 219;
fugitive members restored, 220;
votes no more addresses to king, 225;
reverses votes, and negotiates with Charles, 231;
causes of unpopularity, 231-234;
financial administration of, 233;
accepts king’s concessions, 237;
by Pride, 237;
_Rump_ erects high court for trial of king, 238;
establishes Republic, 277;
raises a powerful navy, 296;
government recognized abroad, 297;
foreign policy, 297-299;
war with Holland, 299-302;
severity of government, 307-310;
reform of law, 312;
bill for new representative, 313;
expelled by Cromwell, 314;
restored by officers, 370, 371;
Presbyterian members restored by Monk, 372;
votes own dissolution, 373;
_Barebone’s_, reforms of, 317-325;
_First of Protector_, 333, 334;
reformed representation, 333;
_Second of Protector_, sentence on Naylor, 348;
Petition and Advice, 349;
_Second Session_, new House of Lords, 360;
dissolved, 362;
_of Richard Cromwell_, 368;
_Convention_, 373;
_Oxford Parliament_, 157
Patronage, 323
Pembroke Castle, 227
Penderells, 295
Penn, Admiral, 354, 356
Pennington, Captain, 32
Penruddock, 334
Peters, Hugh, 383
Petition and Advice, 349, 360, 367
Petition of Right, 42
Pilgrim Fathers, 75, 254
Pirates, 32, 66
Poor Laws, 268-270
Popham, 296
Population, 248
Portugal, 296, 331, 358
Post Office, 272
Prerogative, royal, 5, 29, 42, 51, 68
Presbyterians, in England, 10, 102, 150, 151, 155, 178, 189, 192,
195, 202, 214, 231, 237, 307, 330, 362;
in Scotland, 11, 76, 153, 201
Preston, 227-230
Pride, Colonel, 237, 312, 360
Prisoners, 149, 335
Prisons, 261, 323, 325
Proclamations, 55
Propositions, of York, 118;
of Oxford, 136;
of Uxbridge, 176;
of Newcastle, 195;
of army, 217;
of Newport, 235
Prynne, 73, 236
Puritans, 9, 12, 20, 22, 70-74, 256, 258, 377, 378
Pym, John, 42, 48, 84, 91, 95, 102, 103, 106, 109, 160, 116, 123,
154, 306, 382, 384
Quakers, 342
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 23
Regicides, fate of, 382, 383
Remonstrance, Grand, 116, 120
Republicans, 152, 205, 225, 234, 244, 299, 304-307, 327, 330,
334-337, 348, 361, 368, 370
Rich, Robert, 360, 364
Rochelle, 32, 40, 44, 46
Royalists, 121, 134, 136, 139, 149, 157, 167, 227, 273, 307, 335,
338, 350
Royal Revenue, 53
Rubens, Peter Paul, 256
Rupert, Prince, 14, 119, 126, 128-131, 135, 138, 139, 142, 149, 159,
161-167, 181, 185, 188, 296
Salmasius, 383
Santa Cruz, 354
Savoy, Duke of, 358
Say-and-Sele, Lord, 342
Scots, 77, 80, 94, 154, 190, 193, 198, 225, 227, 229, 284, 285-291,
316, 333, 344, 375
Sectarians, 12, 135, 152, 204
Selden, 201
Sexby, 338, 351
Seymour, William, 17
Sheffield, 247
Ship-money, 66, 68, 83. See Appendix
Shrewsbury, Countess of, 17
Sidney, Algernon, 190, 238, 244
Skippon, 118, 133, 185, 213, 244, 336
Socage tenure, 2
Spain, 22, 28, 33, 37, 350, 353, 355-357
Statute of Winchester, 114
St. Domingo, 355
St. John, 119, 299, 303, 369
St. Kitts, 354
Strafford, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Earl of, 42, 47, 52, 60-65, 78, 85,
87-92, 95, 97. See Appendix
Strickland, 299
Strode, 110
Stuart, Lady Arabella, 17;
Lady Elizabeth, 217, 240;
Charles, Prince of Wales, 130, 181, 192, 227, 236, 278, 285,
291-296, 350, 361, 363, 370;
James, 357, 379
Subsidies, 15, 30, 158
Superstitions, 262
Sweden, 331
Syndercomb, 351
Taylor, Jeremy, 211
Teneriffe, 356
Thirty Years’ War, 22, 65, 352
Tithes, 320, 321, 325
Tom Tell-Truth, 26
Tortuga, 354
Torture, 5, 44, 378
Trade, 249-254
Travelling, 271
Treason, law of high, 87
Tunis, 354
Uxbridge, 174-177
Valentine, 49, 56
Vandyke, 256
Vane, Sir Henry, the elder, 79, 89
Vane, Sir Henry, the younger, 91, 153, 205, 207, 244, 277, 301, 310,
312, 314, 336, 369, 384, 386
Van Tromp, 300-302, 322
Vaudois, 355
Venables, General, 354, 355
Verney, Sir Edmund, 122
Waller, Sir William, 122, 139, 157, 159, 167, 172
Waller, the poet, 137
Warwick, Robert Rich, Earl of, 360, 364
Westphalia, Treaty of, 353
Wexford, 283
Whalley, Colonel, 223
Whitelock, Bulstrode, 278, 369
Wildman, 335
William III., 242, 379
Williams, Archbishop of York, 108
Wilmot, Colonel, 128
Witchcraft, 263
Worcester, 291-295
Wroth, Sir Thomas, 225
Yeomen, 2, 266
York, 116, 118, 158, 160, 167
THE END.
HISTORY
OF THE
CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA.
BY
THE COMTE DE PARIS.
Translated with the approval of the author, by LOUIS F. TASISTRO.
Edited by HENRY COPPÉE, LL.D. Each volume embracing, without
abridgment, two volumes of the French edition. With Maps faithfully
engraved from the originals, and printed in three colors. 8vo, per
volume, Cloth, $3.50; Sheep, Library Style, $4.50; Half Turkey Morocco,
$6.00.
Vols. I and II now ready. To be complete in Four volumes.
“We advise all Americans to read it carefully, and judge for
themselves if ‘the future historian of our war,’ of whom we have
heard so much, be not already arrived in the Comte de Paris. The
translation is very good.”--THE NATION, _New York_.
“It is so superior to all those preceding it that there is
not one in America or Europe worthy to be placed in the same
class.”--SATURDAY REVIEW, _London, England_.
“Cannot but prove most valuable and interesting to the American
reader. I find it very good, indeed.”--W. T. SHERMAN, _General_.
“It is by far the best work which has as yet been given to the
world in connection with the subject of which it treats....
The Comte de Paris challenges the admiration of even the
Southerners, by the fair and philosophical spirit in which
he describes events, and sets forth their relations to each
other.... He has done for the military institutions and aptitudes
of the American people what De Tocqueville has done for their
political institutions; and he has written in a more liberal and
hopeful spirit.... In all cases his criticisms are moderate and
apparently unprejudiced.”--_Maj.-Gen._ J. H. WILSON, _in the
International Review_.
“We may accredit it with a truthfulness that will entitle it to a
place amongst the most valuable books of the present day.”--THE
TIMES, _New York_.
“It becomes continually clearer that this is destined to be the
generally received history of the war. It will be deservedly
so, for the author, by virtue of being a foreigner, has an
impartiality which it would be hard for one of us to acquire;
he has a satisfactory knowledge of both the great principles
and the _minutiæ_ of the great struggle, and he spares no pains
in search of thoroughness and accuracy. More than this, he is
so completely master of his subject that he makes clear the
most complicated campaigns, and he tells his story in the most
lucid way. His position throughout is that of a judge and not
that of an advocate, which is all the more commendable in view
of the recentness of the events he describes; compared in this
respect with Kinglake’s History of the Crimean War, for instance,
the superiority of this history is very plain.... The work of
translation has been well done.”--THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, _Boston_.
“Most Americans understand, in a vague way, that our fighting was
different from that common on European soil, and that a foreign
army would have to learn war anew before it could hope to ‘whip
us.’ From this book they can learn just what the difference
was, and will find that the notion they hold so vaguely has its
basis of truth.... We would like to see this history have a wide
circulation among Americans. It gives a succinct account of the
more important conflicts in which we have been engaged, and is in
reality a history of the United States Army, the Civil War being
its most extended detail.... The presentation of political events
is fair in spirit and moderate in expression.... The work shows
great care, and the errors of statement are remarkably few and
unimportant. The translation is well made.”--THE GALAXY, _New
York_.
“In this, the first part of his great work on the American
War, the head of the Orleans family has put pen to paper with
excellent result.... Our present impression is that it will form
by far the best history of the American War. The translation
reads well.”--THE ATHENÆUM, _London, England_.
“The fact that I have been engaged for several years in gathering
material and making other preparation for the writing of a
history of our civil war has led me to read the Comte de Paris’s
work with greater care and much more critically than I should
otherwise have done, and I regard it as the only one yet written
which is, in a proper sense, a history of the Civil War in
America. It is a thoroughly good history of the War, very much
better, indeed, than I had thought it possible for any one to
write at present.
“The Comte de Paris had two especial dangers to encounter in his
effort to write impartially of our war. His personal impressions
of the quarrel and of the men who were engaged in it were
received while he was an officer upon one side, actively engaged
in military service, and there was every reason to apprehend
prejudice upon his part against the people whom he was bound to
regard as enemies. He was a member of the staff of a general
officer who was afterward a candidate for political preferment
and it would have been natural enough for him to espouse the
personal cause of this chief in all matters pertaining to his
campaigns. Both of these dangers the Comte de Paris seems to me
to have escaped, and his perfect fairness is not less remarkable
than his singular accuracy of perception in matters of character
and motive. His candor and impartiality must add largely to the
acceptability of his work, both at the North and at the South,
and it is these qualifications, more than any others, which
distinguish his history from the many treatises we have from
American writers on the subject.”--GEO. CARY EGGLESTON, _late of
Gen. J. E. B. Stuart’s Cavalry, Confederate Army, author of “A
Rebel’s Recollections,” etc._
LECTURES
DELIVERED IN AMERICA.
BY
CHARLES KINGSLEY,
LATE CANON OF WESTMINSTER, ETC.
=Edited by Mrs. Kingsley. 12mo, Toned Paper, Cloth, $1.25.=
CONTENTS.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY--THE STAGE AS IT ONCE WAS--THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF
AMERICA--THE SERVANT OF THE LORD--ANCIENT CIVILIZATION.
“We know of no recent book that contains, in the same space, so
much that is well worth reading.”--BOSTON COURIER.
“The five essays before us exhibit his diversified talents,
his broad scholarship, his brilliant diction, his penetrating
insight, his trusty manliness, and his warm, wide-embracing
affections; ... in each one there are a few hints dropped, a few
lessons taught, and a few chords of emotion vigorously struck,
that makes us the better for the experience.”--CHICAGO TRIBUNE.
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Transcriber's Note
1. Obvious printing errors have been corrected. Hyphenation has been
made consistent where one of the options is in a clear majority:
otherwise hyphenation has been retained as printed.
2. The following further changes have been made:
p. 108: "pull them out?" to "pull them out!"
p. 125: "bandeleer" to "bandoleer".
p. 165: "lieutenant’s-general’s" to "lieutenant-general’s".
p. 303 (heading to Chapter XIII.): "Barebones’" to "Barebone’s".
p. 391 (after "one that may"): change long dash to em-dash.
p. 400 (Index, "France"): 330 to 380.
p. 401 (Index, "Mardyke"): 348 to 357.