CROMWELL.
1651-1660.
[Sidenote: =Power of Cromwell.=]
After the "crowning mercy" of Worcester fight, the rule of England
lay nominally in the hands of its mutilated and discredited House of
Commons, the representative of a mere fraction of the nation. But
really the power to move the realm was in the hands of the army, which
had made, and could as easily unmake, the mockery of representative
government which sat at Westminster. And in the army Cromwell was
growing more and more supreme; his old colleague Fairfax had sunk back
into civil life; his mutinous subordinates the Levellers had been
crushed; the colonels and generals who held power under him were for
the most part his humble servants.
Cromwell had as yet no official post corresponding to his real
omnipotence. He was commander of the army, and a member of the Council
of State, but nothing more. His will, nevertheless, was the main factor
in the governance of England.
[Sidenote: =His character and aims.=]
It is time to say a few words of the character of this extraordinary
man, whom we have hitherto seen merely as the heaven-sent leader of the
Parliamentary armies, and the guiding spirit of the Independent party.
Oliver was a county gentleman of Huntingdonshire, a man of religion
from his youth up, and a prominent member of the Parliaments of 1628
and 1640. He was more than forty years old before he ever drew sword
or put a squadron in battle array. No general save Julius Cæsar ever
started on a great military career so late in life. Cromwell himself
aimed at being a reformer of the life and faith of the nation much more
than a soldier. He had taken to war because the times required it, but
military power and military glory was not his end in life. He wished to
see England orderly, prosperous, and free, according to his ideas of
freedom in things spiritual and temporal. In religion his ideal was the
Independent system, in which the state tolerated most forms of worship,
and was itself committed to none. In things temporal he wished to see
the realm ruled by a truly representative House of Commons, where every
district should be represented according to its population. He had no
patience for the existing House, in which a haphazard arrangement,
dating back from the middle ages, gave no fair representation to
England--where the vanished boroughs of Dunwich or Sarum had as many
members as Yorkshire or Norfolk. If Cromwell had found a House of
Commons that agreed with his views, he would have worked smoothly with
them, and lived and died no more than their first servant.
[Sidenote: =Cromwell driven into illegality.=]
Unfortunately, however, Cromwell's views did not happen to be shared
by any large proportion of the nation. Half England was secretly
Episcopalian; a large proportion of the rest was Presbyterian; among
his own Independent party there were numberless sects and factions.
In the constitution of England, then as now, there was no place for
an over-great personality backed by a strong military force. But such
a personage existed in Cromwell. The question now arose whether he
would consent to see the land governed by men whom he despised, in ways
of which he disapproved, or whether he would proceed to interfere.
Interference would be unconstitutional; but everything had been
unconstitutional in England for ten years, and the temptation to use
force was irresistible to a man who had strong political theories, a
self-reliant temper, and 20,000 formidable veterans at his back. He
could never forget that the "Rump" was the army's creature, and that
it had been created to carry out the army's views. His very energy
and conscientiousness were certain to drive him into illegalities. It
is customary to reproach Cromwell with dissimulation and ambition, to
make his whole career turn on a settled desire to make himself despot
of England. This view entirely misconceives the man. It is far more
correct to look upon him as a man of strong principles and prejudices,
who was carried away by his desire to work out his programme, and who
struck down--often with great violence and illegality--all that stood
in his way. If he finally seized autocratic power, it was because he
found that in no other way could he put his plans in practice. Power,
in short, was for him the means, not the end. Unfortunately for his
reputation, England has always objected to being dragooned into the
acceptance of any programme or set of views, and if she would not
accept the theories of a Stuart, the child of a hundred kings, it was
hardly likely that she would acquiesce tamely in those of a simple
country gentleman of Huntingdonshire; the fact that he was the finest
general of the seventeenth century did not make him an infallible
law-giver.
[Sidenote: =Pretensions of the "Rump."=]
When Cromwell came back victorious from Worcester field, the small
and one-sided House of Commons which had ruled England since Pride's
purge was still supreme in the state. Before he had been three weeks
in London, Oliver hinted to the members that it was time that they
should dissolve themselves, and give place to a freely elected house,
where every shire and borough should be represented. Such a house had
not been seen since 1642, when the Royalist third of the Commons had
seceded at the king's command. But the "Rump" had enjoyed its two years
of power, and had no wish to disperse. It was gradually growing to
believe itself to be an irresponsible oligarchy with no duties to the
nation, and to forget that it purported to represent England. When the
question of dissolution was mooted, it proceeded to fix a date three
years off as a suitable time for its own suppression, making the excuse
that it must recast the constitution of the realm before it dispersed.
This gravely vexed Cromwell and all the friends of reform; still more
was their anger raised when the members proceeded to waste month after
month in fruitless legal discussions, without succeeding in passing any
bill of importance.
[Sidenote: =Foreign relations.--Rivalry with the Dutch.=]
Meanwhile the country had become involved in a foreign war. All the
powers of Europe looked unkindly upon the regicide Commonwealth of
England, and its envoys were maltreated at more than one court. Two
were actually murdered--Anthony Ascham at Madrid, Isaac Dorislaus, at
the Hague; in each case the slayers were exiled English Royalists,
and the foreign government gave little or no satisfaction for the
crime. While English relations with Spain remained strained, those
with Holland gradually grew to an open rupture. The Dutch had been
interested in the Royalist cause because their stadtholder, William
II., Prince of Orange, had married Mary, the eldest daughter of Charles
I., and had sheltered the Prince of Wales at his court for many months.
It was from Holland, too, that the Royalists had received their
supplies of arms during the war. But there was more than this recent
grudge in the ill-feeling between English and Dutch. They had grown of
late to be rivals in the trade of East and West. Their merchants in
the Spice Islands had come to blows as early as 1623, and in America
the Dutch had planted the colony of "New Amsterdam," so as to cut the
connection between Virginia and New England, as far back as 1625. At
present they were competing for the carrying trade both of the Baltic
and the Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: =The Navigation Act.=]
Hence it was that when the indignation of the Parliament against the
Dutch came to a head, it found vent in the celebrated Navigation Act
(1651). This bill provided that goods brought to England from abroad
must be carried either in English ships, or in the ships of the actual
country that grew or manufactured them. Thus the Dutch carrying trade
would be severely maimed. It was not a wise bill, or one in accordance
with the laws of political economy, but it suited the spirit of the
times, and even the usually clear-headed Cromwell gave it his support.
This obvious blow at Dutch interests led, as was intended, to war
(July, 1652).
[Sidenote: =Dutch War.--Blake and Van Tromp.=]
In the struggle which followed, the English fleets were generally
successful. Led by Robert Blake, a colonel of horse who became for the
nonce an admiral, and showed no mean capacity in his new employment,
they obtained several victories. The conflict was not without its
vicissitudes, and on one occasion the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp won a
battle, and sailed down the Channel with a broom at his masthead, to
show that he had swept the seas clean. But his triumph was not for
long; next spring Blake beat him in a fight off the North Foreland
(June 3, 1653), and a final victory off the coast of Holland, in which
the gallant Dutchman was slain, completed the success of the English
fleet. A treaty followed in which the vanquished enemy accepted
the bitter yoke of the Navigation Act, and promised to banish the
Stuarts from Holland. This they did with the better grace because the
republican party among them had just succeeded in excluding the House
of Orange from the stadtholdership. The Orange interest, therefore,
could no longer be exerted in favour of the exiled royal family of
England (1654).
[Sidenote: =Discontent with Parliament.=]
But ere the Dutch war had come to an end, there had occurred a sweeping
political change in England. The "Rump" Parliament had persevered
in its unwise courses; it had carried no reforms, either in Church
or State, but spent all its time in profitless debating. Nor had it
improved its popularity in the country by raising taxes by a new system
which recalled the "tallages" of John or Henry III. Making lists of
all who had taken the Royalist side in the old civil war, it imposed
heavy fines on them, for offences of six or seven years ago. The army
began to grow desperately impatient with the Parliament that it had
made. In August, 1653, a great body of officers petitioned Cromwell, as
their chief, to insist on the Commons dissolving themselves. Somewhat
frightened, the House passed a bill for a dissolution, but with the
extraordinary and preposterous claim that all sitting members should
appear again in the next Parliament without having to seek re-election
by their constituents.
[Sidenote: =Cromwell dissolves Parliament by force.=]
This strange attempt to perpetuate themselves for ever provoked
Cromwell's wrath to boiling-point. He resolved to take a step even
more drastic than Pride's purge. On April 20, 1653, he went down to
Westminster with a guard of musketeers, whom he left outside the door.
Taking his seat as a private member, he presently arose and addressed
his colleagues in a fiery harangue, in which he told them that they
were a set of worthless talkers with no zeal for religion or reform.
When shouted down by the angry Commons, he bade his soldiers enter,
and thrust the dismayed politicians out of the door. The Speaker was
hustled from his chair and Cromwell bade his men "take away that
bauble," the great mace, which lay on the table and represented the
dignity of the Commons of England.
Thus perished the last remnant of the mighty "Long Parliament,"
dissolved by the mere fiat of the great general. Nor did its fall
cause much murmuring, for the nation had long ceased to regard it as
anything more than a body of garrulous and self-seeking oligarchs.
[Sidenote: =The "Barebones'" Parliament.=]
For the moment there was no legal government in England, for Cromwell's
position was quite unconstitutional. He felt this himself, and was
anxious to create a new House, which should work with him and carry
out his ideas of reform; as yet he had no intention of becoming an
autocrat. Accordingly, he summoned in June an assembly which differed
from all that had been before it, since the members were not elected
by the shires and boroughs, but named by a committee of selection, at
which Cromwell presided. This illegally created body was called the
"Nominee Parliament," or more frequently "Barebones' Parliament," from
a London merchant with the extraordinary name of Praise-God Barebones,
who was one of its prominent members.
But Cromwell was to find by repeated experiments that it was impossible
for him to discover any body of men who could work with him on exactly
the lines that he chose. For his own opinions were not those of the
majority of the nation, and hence any assembly that he called was
bound, sooner or later, to quarrel with him. And since he possessed in
his army a weapon able to dissolve any number of parliaments, he was
tempted to bring every quarrel to an end by abruptly dismissing the
recalcitrant House. A less self-confident man, or one who did not think
that he possessed a mandate from above to reform England, might have
learnt to co-operate with a Parliament. But Cromwell was so sure of his
own good intentions, and so convinced that those who questioned them
must be wrong-headed and factious, that he drove away three parliaments
in succession with words of rebuke and of righteous anger.
Barebones' Parliament, a body full of stiff-backed and fanatical
Independents, soon proved too restive for its creator. Cromwell
smiled on their first efforts, when they began to codify the laws
and abolished the Court of Chancery. But he began to frown when this
conclave of "the Saints," as they called themselves, commenced to speak
of confiscating Church-tithes--the maintenance of the clergy--and the
rights both of state and of private patronage to livings. It is even
said that they wished to substitute the Mosaic law from the Book of
Deuteronomy for the ancient law of England. This drew down a rebuke
from Cromwell, whereupon the House very honestly gave their power back
into the hands from whence they had taken it, and dissolved themselves
(December, 1653).
[Sidenote: =The "Instrument of Government."=]
The dispersion of this unconstitutional assembly was followed
by another experiment in illegality. Cromwell published a
paper-constitution drawn up by himself, called the "Instrument of
Government." This provided that England should be governed by a "Lord
Protector" and a House of Commons. Cromwell himself, of course, took
the post of Protector, which was to be held for life, and had a
quasi-royal character, for it was he who was to summon and dissolve
Parliaments, and his assent was required to all bills; but it was
stipulated that "the Protector should have no power to reject such
laws as were themselves in accordance with the constitution of the
commonwealth"--a vague check, since he himself would have to decide
on the legality of each enactment. The new House of Commons was a
fairly constituted body, for it included members from Scotland and
Ireland, and among the English seats all the "rotten boroughs" were
disfranchised, while their members were distributed among the rising
towns, such as Leeds, Liverpool, and Halifax, and the more populous
counties. The Protector was to have no power of dissolving the Commons
till they had sat five months at least (December 16, 1653).
[Sidenote: =Cromwell Lord Protector.--His reforms.=]
For nine months Cromwell ruled as "Lord Protector" without any check
on his power, for the Parliament was not to assemble till September,
1654. Pending its arrival, the Protector began to introduce many
reforms; he recast the Courts of Justice, and introduced his favourite
scheme for the government of the Church. This was the toleration of
all Protestant sects, and the distribution of Church patronage among
them by a committee of selection called "Triers." This body was only to
inquire whether the candidate for a living was of a good life, and held
the essential doctrines of Christianity. It was not to inquire whether
he was Presbyterian, Independent, or Episcopalian; only Romanists were
formally excluded. But, unfortunately for the content of the land,
Cromwell's ordinance that the old Church of England Prayer-book was not
to be used, effectually prevented any conscientious Episcopalian from
applying to the "Triers." The Churchmen could only meet by stealth to
celebrate their sacraments, and they formed at least half the nation.
Cromwell's well-meant arrangements were gall and bitterness to them,
and discontent was always rife.
[Sidenote: =The New-Model Parliament.=]
Cromwell's New-Model Parliament met on September 3, 1654, the third
anniversary of Worcester fight. It was a body that well expressed the
wishes of the Puritan half of the nation, but the Royalists were, of
course, excluded. The sense that it was a strong and representative
body made it confident and haughty; it at once began to discuss
the legality of the "Instrument of Government," and to pass bills
restricting the Protector's power. Cromwell with some difficulty
kept his temper for the statutory five months, and then dissolved it
(January 22, 1655).
[Sidenote: =Autocracy of Cromwell.--Attempted assassination.=]
Once more the Lord Protector was left alone as autocrat of Great
Britain. He was not happy in the position; the dissolution of the
New-Model Parliament had angered Independents and Presbyterians alike.
They murmured that a despotic Protector was no better than a despotic
King. Conspiracies began to be formed against Cromwell, both by
Royalists and extreme republicans. Some were for open rebellion, some
for secret murder, for autocrats are easy to make away with. No one
save Guy Fawkes ever tried to slay a whole Parliament, but the power
of the individual despot is often tempered by assassination. Cromwell
promptly got the better of a few wild spirits who tried to raise open
war, for the army was still devotedly loyal to him. But his spirit was
sorely tried by the assassination plots; the pamphlet which Colonel
Sexby, the Leveller, published, under the title of _Killing no Murder_,
especially incensed him. For the future he went on his way resolute,
but nervously expecting a pistol-shot from every dark corner.
[Sidenote: =Military despotism established.=]
For eighteen months after the dissolution of the New-Model Parliament
Cromwell ruled as autocrat without any House of Commons to check
him (January, 1655, to September, 1656). This time he tried another
unconstitutional experiment for the governance of the realm. He
divided England into twelve districts, and set over them twelve
major-generals picked from the army, whose despotic power replaced
that of lords-lieutenant and sheriffs. This expedient made even
more evident than before the fact that the army was holding down the
nation by force, and provoked much adverse comment. As a matter of
fact, Cromwell's rule, though utterly illegal, was very efficient.
He gathered around him many capable men: the poet Milton--though a
convinced republican--served as his foreign secretary; Thurlow, a very
able man, was his Secretary of State. Both Monk, who governed Scotland,
and Henry Cromwell, the Lord-Deputy of Ireland, the Protector's
youngest son, were skilled administrators; and Blake, who had charge
of the fleet, was the greatest admiral that England had yet seen. But
no amount of good governance suffices to content a nation held down
by armed force against its will, and Cromwell's rule could never be
popular.
[Sidenote: =Scotland and Ireland.=]
It was, however, successful and glorious, both in neighbouring lands
and far abroad, if it was hated at home. Scotland was orderly and
prosperous; Cromwell had much in common with the Covenanters, though
he had suppressed them so sternly, and after 1651 there was not
much opposition to him. In Ireland the matter was very different;
Cromwell loathed Romanists with the hatred of the old Protestants of
the Elizabethan age. His scheme of government for that realm was the
drastic and cruel expedient of thrusting all the native Irish into
the single province of Connaught, and of dividing up the rest of the
land among English and Scots settlers, just as Ulster had been treated
in the time of James I. The expulsion was carried out with merciless
rigour, and thousands of Cromwell's discharged veterans and other
colonists were planted in Munster and Leinster. But the settlement was
only to be a very partial success; the old soldiers did not make good
farmers in a pastoral country, and the native Irish gradually crept
back to act as the servants and labourers of the conquerors, so that a
homogeneous English and Protestant colony was never established. When
the Protector died a few years later, many of the colonists departed,
others were merged in the Irish masses, and only in limited districts
did traces of his cruel work survive. But the "curse of Cromwell"
remained the bitterest oath in the Irish peasant's mouth.
[Sidenote: =Cromwell's foreign policy.=]
Master of Great Britain, the Lord Protector resolved that this country
should resume the great place in the counsels of Europe which it had
held in the time of Elizabeth. His foreign policy was the same as
that of the great queen--resolute opposition to Spain as the foe of
Protestantism and the monopolist of the trade of the Indies. In 1655
Cromwell declared war on Philip IV., and sent forth his fleets under
Blake to prey on the Spaniards. The great admiral stormed the strongly
fortified harbour of Teneriffe, in the Canary Islands, and sent home
several silver-laden galleons from America which were lying therein
(April, 1656). After several other successes he died at sea, just as he
was returning to England. Another expedition under Venables captured
the fertile island of Jamaica, in the West Indies, though it failed to
get possession of the larger and stronger island of San Domingo. On the
European continent Cromwell allied himself with France, the eternal
enemy of Spain, and sent a strong brigade of his formidable regulars to
aid the troops of the young Lewis XIV. This force much distinguished
itself in the war, and won the ports of Dunkirk and Mardyke in Flanders
(1657-58), which by agreement with the French were kept as English
possessions. At this time Cromwell's arm reached so far that he was
even able to interfere to prevent the Duke of Savoy from persecuting
his Protestant subjects the Waldenses (1655), an event which called
forth Milton's celebrated sonnet, commencing--
"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered o'er the Alpine valleys cold."
[Sidenote: =Constitutional experiments.--A House of Lords.=]
But though victorious abroad, the Lord Protector was still vexed
that he could not build up a stable constitution at home. In the
midst of his successes he summoned his third and last Parliament in
September, 1656. He had now resolved to experiment in the direction
of restoring many of the time-honoured arrangements of the monarchy.
He had determined to create a second chamber, like the old House of
Lords, and to assimilate his own position as Protector to that of the
old kings. By excluding from election about a hundred persons who had
been active in the Parliaments of 1653 and 1654, he obtained a House of
Commons somewhat more docile than either of his earlier assemblies. In
an address called "the humble Petition and Advice," they besought him
to assume all the old prerogatives of royalty, and even the name of
king. The last he refused, knowing the discontent it would arouse among
his sternly republican followers in the army. But he accepted a status
which gave him all that the regal name would have implied. At the same
time he endeavoured to make his position less unconstitutional, by
abolishing the major-generals, and giving the Commons complete control
over taxation. But even with this loyal and obedient house the Lord
Protector could not long agree. They fell out upon the question of
the setting up of his new House of Lords, a body whose authority they
utterly refused to acknowledge. On this point the Commons proved so
recalcitrant that Oliver dissolved them after they had sat sixteen
months (January, 1658).
[Sidenote: =Death of Cromwell.=]
This would not have been the last of his constitutional experiments if
his life had been spared. But in the summer of the same year, while
designs for a new Parliament were already being mooted, he was taken
ill. His health had been broken by the constant nervous strain of
facing perpetual assassination plots, and wrangling with refractory
Parliaments. He died on September 3, 1658, the seventh anniversary of
the "crowning mercy" of Worcester.
He left England great and prosperous, but discontented and unhappy.
An autocrat, however well meaning, is never pardoned if he fails to
understand and obey the feeling of the nation. Oliver was so much out
of sympathy with the majority that he could not escape bitter hatred.
Therefore all his work was built on the sand, and all that he had
accomplished vanished with his death, save the mere material gains
of commerce and colonies that he had won for England. His name, very
unjustly, became a byword for ambition and religious cant. A whole
generation had to pass before men dared speak well of him.
[Sidenote: =Richard Cromwell Protector.=]
The moment that Cromwell died, his system began to break up; in six
months it had disappeared; in eighteen months England once more was
ruled by a Stuart king. The Lord Protector had named no successor, but
the Council of State took the step of nominating his son Richard to his
place, as being the man who would divide parties the least. Richard
Cromwell was an easy-going country gentleman, without any of his
father's characteristics. He was neither self-confident, nor a soldier,
nor a man of fervent religion. When saluted as Protector, he observed
that he would never make anything more than a fair chief-constable.
He bore himself modestly and discreetly, and proceeded at once to
endeavour to put himself right with the nation by calling a Parliament.
It met in January, 1659, and was found to contain many concealed
Royalists, and many more stiff republicans of the old Presbyterian
type, who objected on principle to the protectorship. Such a body was
bound to fall into internal quarrels; all parties in it concurred in
treating the unfortunate Richard with disregard.
[Sidenote: =Richard and the army.--He resigns.=]
But it was not the Parliament which was to upset the new Lord
Protector. The army saw that with Oliver's death their old power was
gone, for neither Richard nor the two Houses had any sympathy with
them. A council of officers met, and resolved to seize control of
affairs. They petitioned for the appointment of a general-in-chief who
should represent them and act as their leader. When this was refused, a
deputation of colonels called on the weak Richard, and hectored him, by
threats of violence, into dissolving Parliament (April, 1659). Equally
unwilling and unable to become a military autocrat, the Lord Protector
immediately after resigned his office, and went off in joy to his quiet
country seat of Hursley. He lived there as an obscure squire for more
than forty years, and survived till the reign of Queen Anne.
[Sidenote: =Revival of the "Rump."=]
England was now without a Protector and without a Parliament, left in
the hands of a ring of ambitious and fanatical military men. Looking
round for the fittest tool to serve their purposes, the committee of
officers resolved on restoring the old "Rump Parliament" which had
disappeared so ignominiously six years before. Accordingly, they sought
out the Independent members who had once sat in that body, and restored
them to Westminster Hall. Forty survivors under Speaker Lenthall took
their old places, and claimed to be the governing power of England (May
9).
[Sidenote: =Quarrels of the military leaders.=]
Of all the bodies which had ever ruled England, the "Rump" had been the
most incapable and the most despised. The whole nation was indignant at
seeing its miserable remnant replaced in power. Meanwhile the officers
began to fall out with each other: Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, had
each his party among the soldiery, and aspired to fill Oliver's vacant
place. Eight months of anarchy followed; the various generals bullied
the Parliament and intrigued against each other. Royalist risings took
place in Cheshire and the West. Finally Lambert, the most vigorous of
the military men, entered London with his regiments and drove out the
Parliament, just as Oliver had done six years before. But Lambert was
no Cromwell; he only ruled a fraction of the soldiery, and had no party
among the people (October, 1659).
[Sidenote: =Popular wish for a Restoration.=]
The divisions of the army had at last broken the formidable military
power which had so long repressed the wishes of the nation.
Commonwealths and Protectors had been tried in the balance and found
wanting. There was a general feeling that the only way out of anarchy
was the restoration of the old constitution of England, with King,
Lords, and Commons. The majority even of the original Parliamentarians
of 1642 were ready to acknowledge that they had done unwisely, in
breaking up the foundations of law and order by abolishing the
monarchy. Calvinistic fervour had worked itself out; the majority of
the old Puritans of the days of Charles I. had come to realize that
Levellers, Fifth-monarchy men, and military saints were even more
objectionable and impracticable than the Episcopalians whom they had
once hated so sorely.
[Sidenote: =Monk marches to London.=]
Meanwhile there was a man who saw clearly the one way to restore a
stable government and to content the nation. George Monk, a calm,
self-reliant soldier who commanded the army in Scotland, had resolved
to use his regiments, on whose obedience he could implicitly count, to
restore legal and constitutional rule. His own private ambition lay in
the direction of a quiet and assured competence, not of an unsteady
grasp on supreme power. He put himself secretly in communication with
the exiled Prince of Wales and the chiefs of the English Royalists.
No one else knew his design. Crossing the Tweed with 7000 men, he
scattered the troops of Lambert and seized London. Then he summoned
all the surviving members of the old "Long Parliament," as it had sat
in 1642, to meet at Westminster, on the ground that it had been the
last undoubtedly legal and constitutional government that England had
possessed. The members met, now for the most part elderly men, cured
of their old fanaticisms by ten years of military despotism, and ready
for any reasonable compromise. By Monk's direction they issued writs
for a new Parliament, and then formally dissolved themselves.
[Sidenote: =The Convention Parliament.--Declaration of Breda.=]
The new or Convention Parliament met on April 26, 1660; it was full
of Royalists, who for the first time since the civil war dared show
themselves and avow their opinions. Monk now openly began to negotiate
with Prince Charles for a restoration of the monarchy, on the basis of
oblivion of the past, and toleration and constitutional government for
the future. The exiled Stuart promised these things in his "Declaration
of Breda," though there were in his promises certain reservations,
which cautious men regarded with distrust.
[Sidenote: =Return of Charles II.=]
But the realm was yearning for repose and peace, and the Parliament
accepted Charles's offer with haste and effusion. Lambert and a few
fanatical regiments vainly attempted to struggle against the popular
will, but Monk crushed them with ease. In May 1660, the Prince of Wales
was formally invited to return and resume his hereditary rights. On the
29th of the month he landed at Dover, and was saluted as Charles II. by
the unanimous voice of a rejoicing nation.