After Lambert's imitation of Oliver Cromwell, in dissolving the
House of Commons, England might be said to be without any Government
at all. In contrast with our conscious security twenty years ago,
and our reliance upon the stability of the Constitution at a moment
when political changes were sweeping over Europe, as rapidly as
the shadows of the clouds chase each other over the corn-fields,
our fathers, in the latter part of the year 1659, felt they had no
political constitution whatever in existence, except as it might be
preserved in lawyers' books, and in people's memories. The Republicans
were at sixes and sevens. Some were for a select Senate, and a
Parliamentary representation; some for an Assembly chosen by the
people, and for Councils of State chosen by that Assembly; some for
a couple of Councils, both chosen by the popular voice; and some for
a scheme which seemed like a revival of the Lacedæmonian Ephori.[46]
Amidst distractions of opinion these speculatists were inspired by
personal animosities; and, being mutually jealous, they constantly
misapprehended each other's motives. It was a strange time, and as sad
as it was strange--when, at the Rota Club, which met at the Turk's
Head, in New Palace Yard, where Harrington and his friends were wont
to drink their glasses of water--it had become a _practical_ question,
under what sort of Government they were to live the following year?
[Sidenote: INTERREGNUM--CONFUSION.]
London was a Babel of ecclesiastical no less than of political
theories. Presbyterians contended that the Solemn League and Covenant
alone could heal the nation's wounds. Fifth Monarchy men could see no
hope but in the second coming of Christ. Some contended for toleration
to a limited extent, with a national religion exercised according to
Parliamentary law--the legal and ancient provision for a national
ministry being augmented, so as to secure to each clergyman £100 per
annum. Others contended for "the way of old, laid down by Christ," to
bring it about again, and settle it in the world; and such teachers
declared that there needed to be an utter plucking up of all that
was in esteem or desire, or had been for many hundred years.[47] In
the _Modest Plea for an Equal Commonwealth_, published in 1659, it
was proposed to abolish tithes, upon composition being made for them
by landholders; the money so raised to be used for satisfying the
proprietors, and paying the arrears of the Army; also for discharging
public debts, and providing for the dispossessed incumbents during
the remainder of their lives.[48] Causes of discontent and disquiet,
often overlooked, existed at that period. Scarcity always aggravates
when it does not produce political confusion. The price of corn had
singularly fluctuated during the Commonwealth: like the tide it had
gradually ebbed during the first half; like the tide it had gradually
flowed during the second. In 1649, the year of Charles' execution,
wheat had reached eighty shillings a quarter; in 1654, the first year
of Oliver's protectorate, it fell as low as twenty-six shillings--good
harvests coming to bless his new administration. After that year wheat
rose again, till in 1659 it attained the price of sixty-six shillings;
the dearness of bread being, as we might expect, however unjustly, laid
at the door of a Government arrived at the last stage of incompetency
and weakness.[49] The result of combined calamities speedily became
apparent. The military were dissatisfied and divided. Troops lawlessly
prowled about the country; they levied contributions in all quarters,
threatening their enemies, and harassing their friends. Their swords
were warrants for exaction; and when told that their conduct would lead
to the return of Charles Stuart, they answered such an event could
never happen so long as they continued to carry arms. Colonels and
Captains lost command over their men; the latter did what was right in
their own eyes, and nothing else.[50]
[Sidenote: 1659.]
It is startling to find how rapidly change succeeded change in high
places. The remains of the Long Parliament, as it existed at the time
of its dissolution by Oliver Cromwell, were, for want of better rulers,
restored the day after Christmas-day,[51] according to the wishes of
the soldiers, not the Generals. Lenthall, after summoning such members
as could be found, again arrayed himself in his Speaker's robes; again
went in state to the House to reoccupy the old chair; and the soldiers,
who ten weeks before had driven him from the doors of St. Stephen's,
now shouted, at the top of their voices, in honour of his solemn
re-entrance. Prynne, and other gentlemen excluded by Pride's purge,
were once more excepted from the number summoned, and sought in vain
re-admission to their vacant seats. The remnant of legislators upon
assembling anew appointed a Council of State; but never was any form of
Government so unmercifully ridiculed as was this.
[Sidenote: INTERREGNUM.--CONFUSION.]
Something needed to be done. The Royalists throughout all this tumult
had not been asleep. They had increased the miserable confusion, and
even rejoiced in the gloom, because the darker the night the nearer
the dawn. Booth's rising in August had been repressed, but an enormous
flood of disaffection, of which that had been a sort of Geyser outgush,
continued to boil beneath the surface. Secret conferences were held;
plots were laid. The deeply engrained love of Monarchy in the English
mind--only painted over of late years--now that the paint was being
rubbed off, became distinctly visible. The press took the utmost
license. Evelyn in his _Apology for the Royal Party_ denounced the
Rump as a coffin which was yet less empty than the heads of certain
politicians. He boldly demanded the restoration of Charles Stuart,
maintaining that he might be trusted because of his innate love of
justice, and his father's dying injunctions; and because there were
none, however crimson-dyed their crimes, whom he would not pardon in
the abundance of his clemency and mercy. The author of _A Plea for
Limited Monarchy_ adds the sorrows of memory to the pleasures of hope,
as motives for restoring the King; for he dwells upon the decay of
trade, and complains that the oil and honey promised by Oliver had been
turned to bitterness and gall; and that Lambert's free quarterings had
licked up the little which had been left in the people's cruse.[52]
[Sidenote: 1659.]
These appeals fell on willing ears. The nation was weary--weary
of inefficient rulers, weary of ideal Republics. Had there been
some master-spirit equal to the departed one, with a strong and
well-disciplined Army at his back, the Commonwealth might even now at
last have been restored to what it was two years before; but nobody
like the vanished man remained, and the Army fell to pieces.
[Sidenote: MONK.]
General Monk had a large portion of it under his immediate control
in the North. The Committee of Safety had, in the month of November,
appointed him Commander-in-Chief of all the forces, and he now
determined to employ his influence for purposes of his own. The troops
under Lambert, who still cherished Republican ideas and designs, were
ordered by a messenger of Parliament to withdraw to their respective
quarters; consequently that ambitious and turbulent personage retired
into privacy. The soldiers in London, tired of their commanders, had
asked for the restoration of the Rump, and had placed themselves under
its authority. Monk alone possessed much military power. In the month
of January we find him marching up to London. On entering the gates
of York two Presbyterian ministers escorted him to his lodgings; one
of them, the eminent Edward Bowles, "the spring that moved all the
wheels in that city," who "dealt with the General about weighty and
dangerous affairs," keeping him up till midnight, and pressing him
very hard to stay there, and declare for the King. "Have you made any
such promise?" inquired Monk's chaplain. "No, truly, I have not; or, I
have _not yet_," was the reply. After a pause the chaplain remarked,
"When the famous Gustavus entered Germany, he said, 'that if his shirt
knew what he intended to do, he would tear it from his back, and burn
it.'" The speaker applied the story to his master, entreating him
to sleep between York and London; and when he entered the walls of
the Metropolis to open his eyes, and look about him.[53] Perhaps the
chaplain knew that such counsel would be agreeable to his patron; but
it was quite unnecessary to talk in this fashion to one pre-eminently
reticent, and as watchful with his eyes as he was cautious with his
lips.
[Sidenote: 1660.]
Monk, at the time, was far from being reputed a Royalist. He, with
his officers, had in the month of June, 1659, expressed Republican
opinions. In the following November the same person corresponding with
Dr. Owen, and other representatives of the Independents in London,
promised that their interests should ever be dear to his heart; and
gave it as his opinion that the laws and rights for which they had been
struggling through eighteen years might be "reduced to a Parliamentary
Government, and the people's consenting to the laws."[54] The General
reached St. Albans on the 28th of January, when Hugh Peters preached
before him a characteristic sermon, little thinking of what the chief
person in the audience was about to accomplish. "As for his sermon,"
says one who heard it, "he managed it with some dexterity at the first
(allowing the cantings of his expressions.) His text was Psalm cvii.
7. 'He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to the city
where they dwelt.'[55] With his fingers on the cushion he measured the
right way from the Red Sea through the wilderness to Canaan; told us
it was not forty days' march, but God led Israel forty years through
the wilderness before they came thither; yet this was still the Lord's
right way, who led his people _crinkledom cum crankledom_; and he
particularly descended into the lives of the patriarchs, how they
journeyed up and down though there were promises of blessing and rest
to them. Then he reviewed our civil wars, our intervals of peace and
fresh distractions, and hopes of rest; but though the Lord's people (he
said) were not yet come to the City of Habitation, He was still leading
them on in the right way, how dark soever His dispensations might
appear to us."[56]
As I am writing an Ecclesiastical, and not a Political History, I
leave untouched the tangled web of incidents occurring in the City
in the councils of the Republicans; and in the relations of Monk to
the conflicting parties, between the 6th and 11th of February. I can
only state, that on the last of these days the martial chief appeared
at Guildhall, and said, "What I have to tell you is this: I have
this morning sent to the Parliament to issue out writs within seven
days, for the filling up of their House, and when filled to sit no
longer than the 6th of May, but then to give place to a full and free
Parliament."[57]
[Sidenote: MONK.]
The joy which this intelligence produced in the City was unbounded,
and it comes before us with the vividness of a present event in the
garrulous _Diary_ of Pepys. As merry peals rolled and fired from the
London steeples, fourteen bonfires were kindled between St. Dunstan's
and Temple Bar; and at Strand Bridge the gossip at the same time
counted thirty-one of those English demonstrations of delight. The
butchers, at the Maypole in the Strand, rang a peal with their knives;
and on Ludgate-hill a man occupied himself with turning a spit, on
which was tied a rump of beef, whilst another man basted it. At one end
of the street there seemed "a whole lane of fire," so hot that people
were fain to keep on the side farthest off.[58]
The excitement following the news in other parts seems to have been not
less intense.
At Nottingham, "as almost all the rest of the island," the town "began
to grow mad." Boys marched about with drums and colours, and offered
insults to Republican soldiers. One night some forty of the latter
class were wounded by stones, thrown at them as they attempted to seize
the obstreperous lads. Two Presbyterians were shot in the scuffle; one
a zealous Royalist, master of the Magazine, at Nottingham Castle. "Upon
the killing of this man," the Presbyterians "were hugely enraged, and
prayed very seditiously in their pulpits, and began openly to desire
the King; not for good will, neither to him, but for destruction to all
the fanatics."[59]
[Sidenote: 1660.]
The rabble raved with joy. Milton mourned over the madness in strains
of majestic sorrow. "And what will they at best say of us, and of
the whole English name, but scoffingly, as of that foolish builder
mentioned by our Saviour, who began to build a tower, and was not able
to finish it? Where is this goodly tower of a Commonwealth, which the
English boasted they would build to overshadow kings, and be another
Rome in the West? The foundation indeed they laid gallantly; but fell
into a worse confusion, not of tongues, but of factions, than those
at the tower of Babel; and have left no memorial of their work behind
them remaining, but in the common laughter of Europe! Which must needs
redound the more to our shame, if we but look on our neighbours,
the United Provinces, to us inferior in all outward advantages; who
notwithstanding, in the midst of greater difficulties, courageously,
wisely, constantly went through with the same work, and are settled in
all the happy enjoyments of a potent and flourishing Republic to this
day."[60]
The political importance of the Independents had declined with the
humiliation of Fleetwood, and of the officers who sympathized with him.
Their strength had rested on the Army, and with the dislocation of the
Army came the termination of their ascendancy. On the 21st of February
the surviving members of the Commons House, who had been excluded by
Colonel Pride, were restored to their former seats, a measure which
placed power once more in Presbyterian hands.
[Sidenote: MONK.]
Monk, the author of this revolution, addressed Parliament on that same
day, and gave it as his opinion that the interests of London must
lie in a Commonwealth--that Government only being capable of making
the country, through the Lord's blessing, the metropolis and bank of
trade for all Christendom; "and as to a government in the Church," he
proceeded to say, "the want whereof hath been no small cause of these
nations' distractions; it is most manifest that if it be monarchical
in the State, the Church must follow, and Prelacy must be brought
in, which these nations, I know, cannot bear, and against which they
have so solemnly sworn: and, indeed, moderate not rigid Presbyterian
government, with a sufficient liberty for consciences truly tender,
appears at present to be the most indifferent and acceptable way to the
Church's settlement."[61]
The fortunes of Presbyterianism had been changeful fortunes. It had
been established by the Long Parliament; its power had waned under the
predominant sway of the Army; though adopted more or less throughout
the country, it had been nowhere so fully developed as in Lancashire;
and it had received no special encouragement from Oliver Cromwell.
After his death it received a slight impetus, only to be checked by the
Republican policy of Vane and the Military. But now Presbyterianism
appears reconstituted in the Church of England--re-established as
the national religion; and it is of great importance to remember
this fact throughout the narrative of the Restoration; for it was
with Presbyterianism thus situated, rather than with Independency,
or any other ecclesiastical systems, that Episcopacy came first into
competition and conflict after the King's return.
[Sidenote: 1660.]
It soon became plain to which ecclesiastical party most influence
belonged. On the 2nd of March the Westminster Confession was readopted;
a proclamation was issued for enforcing all existing laws against
popish priests, Jesuits, and recusants; and a bill was introduced to
provide for an authorized approval of ministers previously to their
holding benefices. The Solemn League and Covenant reappeared on the
wall of the House of Commons, and also was ordered to be read in
every church once a year. Upon the 13th, Dr. Owen, the Independent,
was removed from the Deanery of Christ Church, and Dr. Reynolds, the
Presbyterian, appointed in his room.
But appearances were fallacious. The Restoration was inevitable, and
with the Restoration, the Puritan Establishment, which had been the
offspring of the Civil Wars, virtually expired.