Abate the edge of Traitors, gracious Lord,
That would reduce these bloody days again,
And make poor England weep in streams of blood!
Shakspeare.
Those who have but an indifferent banquet to offer, are not usually
inclined to discourage their guests, by a repulsive bill of fare; yet
surely, when a public invitation is given, there is honesty, and
prudence too, in simply stating the kind of regale we are going to
spread, lest a palled and sickly appetite should expect stimulants, or a
perverted taste should pine for foreign luxuries and modern cookery,
when we have nothing to set before them but plain old English food.
Church and King now look as obsolete in a publication, as beef and
pudding would at a gala dinner; yet let us remember, that as the latter
have fed our heroes from the days of Cressy and Agincourt to the present
times, so the former have fashioned minds fit to animate these mighty
bodies. It is only to those who have a relish for stern virtue and grave
reflection, that I would recommend the following pages.
I have dated this narrative in a peculiarly calamitous period, though
well aware that virtue, like happiness, is supposed to flourish most in
times of tranquility. Such times afford no subjects for the historian or
the bard; and even the moralist is often led to revert rather to those
stormy eras which roused the energies of the human soul, and compelled
it to assert qualities of which they who have observed only the repose
of domestic life can form no conception. Man, attempting with finite
powers to compass the most stupendous designs in spite of physical or
moral obstacles; submitting to every privation, braving danger and
death, often even defying omnipotence, and all for the sake of some
speculative tenet, some doubtful advantage, the post of honour burdened
by superlative responsibility, or the eminence of power attended with
perpetual care, is an object no less interesting to the philosopher,
than it is miraculous to the peasant, who places enjoyment in ease and
animal indulgence. It is on the motives and actions which characterise
this self-denial and enterprise, that the hero and the statesman fix
their attention; forming their models, and drawing their conclusions,
not from the passive inclinations, but from the capabilities of our
species, not from what man would or ought to prefer, but from what he
has achieved when stimulated by hope, goaded by ambition, or instigated
by desperation.
Under the influence of these passions, how often has one restless spirit
disturbed the repose of a prosperous nation, and spread desolation and
misery over the fairest portions of the globe. Does God permit this--and
is he righteous? Yes, short-sighted questioner of Omniscience, the
Father of the universe is never more conspicuous in his paternal care,
than when, by means of temporal afflictions, he draws our regards toward
our heavenly country.--Then is death disarmed of the terrors which are
planted round the bed of prosperity; then is the soul freed from that
bondage of sensual delight, which impedes her spiritual exertion. The no
longer pampered body, subdued to spareness, braced by toil, elastic from
exertion, and patient from habit, is not a clog, but a meet companion
for its immortal associate. Prosperity, among many other evils,
engenders religious apathy, and luxurious selfishness. She presents a
gorgeous stage, on which the puppets of vanity and petty ambition act
their insignificant parts; adversity educates and exercises men.
Nor is the moral harvest a mere gleaning of good deeds. Where misery and
wickedness seem most to abound; where desperadoes and plunderers go
forth to destroy and pillage; the passive virtues pray, and endure.
Self-devoting generosity then interposes her shield, and magnanimous
heroism her sword; benevolence seeks out and consoles distress; the
confessor intercedes with heaven; the patriot sacrifices his fortune and
his comforts; the martyr dies on the scaffold, and the hero in the
field. England hath often witnessed such piteous scenes, and many fear
she is now on the verge of similar calamities, which threaten to cloud
her glory from the envy and admiration of foreign nations, making her a
taunting proverb of reproach to her enemies, while she points a moral,
and adorns a tale, for posterity. May those who govern her wide extended
empire, so study the records of our former woes, and shape their
political course with such single-hearted observance of the unerring
laws of God, as to become, under his Providence, our preservers from
danger; and may the governed, remembering the tyranny which originated
from insubordination; the daring ambition of popular demagogues; the
hypocrisy of noisy reformers, and all the certain misery which arises
from the pursuit of speculative unattainable perfection, adhere to those
institutions, which have been consecrated with the best blood in
England, and proved by the experience of ages to be consistent with as
large a portion of national prosperity, as any people have ever enjoyed.
Yet as our offences may prevail over our prayers, let us prepare our
minds for times of trial. The public duties they require, are adapted to
the discussion of that sex, whose physical and mental powers fit it for
active life, and deliberate policy. But the exercise of the milder
virtues is imperiously called for in seasons of national alarm. Whether
we are to endure the loss of our accustomed wealth and luxury, or to
encounter the far heavier trial of domestic confusion, there are habits
of thinking and acting, which will conduce to individual comfort and
improvement. There are sorrows which neither "King nor laws can cause or
cure;" enjoyments, that no tyrant can withhold; and blessings, which
even the wildest theories of democracy cannot destroy. The asylum where
these sacred heritages of a good conscience are generally concealed, is
the domestic hearth, that circumscribed but important precinct where the
female Lares sit as guardians. Is it presumptuous in one, who has long
officiated at such an household altar, again to solicit the forbearance
and favour, which she has often experienced, by calling public attention
to a popular way of communicating opinions, not first invented by
herself, though she has often had recourse to it. The tale she now
chooses as a vehicle, aims at conveying instruction to the present
times, under the form of a chronicle of the past. The political and
religious motives, which convulsed England in the middle of the
seventeenth century, bear so striking a resemblance to those which are
now attempted to be promulgated, that surely it must be salutary to
remind the inconsiderate, that reformists introduced first anarchy and
then despotism, and that a multitude of new religions gave birth to
infidelity.
Nor let the serious hue which a story must wear that is dated in those
times, when the church militant was called to the house of mourning,
deter the gay and young from a patient perusal. Whatever mere prudential
instructors may affirm, worldly prosperity should not be held out as the
criterion, or the reward of right conduct. Let us remember St.
Augustine's answer to those Pagans, who reproached him with the evils
that Christians, in common with themselves, suffered from the then
convulsed state of the world. They asked him, "Where is thy God?" But he
declined founding the believer's privileges on individual exemptions, or
personal providences. "My God," said he, "in all his attributes,
different from the false impotent Gods of the Heathen, is to be found
wherever his worshippers are;--if I am carried into captivity, his
consolations shall yet reach me;--if I lose the possessions of this
life, my precious faith shall still supply their want;--and if I die,
not as the suffering heathen dies, by his own impious and impatient
hand, but in obedience to the will of God, my great reward begins. I
shall enter upon a life that will never be taken from me; and henceforth
all tears shall be wiped from my eyes."
Adversity purifies communities, as well as individuals. If
fastidiousness, selfishness, pride, and sensuality, conspire to cloud,
with imaginary woes, the enjoyments of those whom others deem happy and
prosperous; faction, discontent, a querulous appetite for freedom, and
an inordinate ambition to acquire sudden pre-eminence, disturb public
tranquillity, when a country has long enjoyed the blessings of plenty
and repose. Previous to the commencement of that great rebellion, which
tore the crown and mitre from the degraded shield of Britain, our
forefathers, as we are informed by the noble historian of his country's
woes and shames[1], experienced an unusual share of prosperity. During
the early part of the reign of King Charles the First, he tells us,
"this nation enjoyed the greatest calm, and the fullest measure of
felicity that any people of any age for so long a time together had been
blessed with, to the envy and wonder of all the other parts of
Christendom." The portrait he draws is so striking, that I must exhibit
it in its native colours. "A happiness invidiously set off by this
distinction, that every other kingdom, every other state, were entangled
and almost destroyed by the fury of arms. The court was in great plenty,
or rather (which is the discredit of plenty) excess and luxury, the
country rich, and what is more, fully enjoying the pleasure of its own
wealth, and so the more easily corrupted with the pride and wantonness
of it. The church flourishing with learned and extraordinary men; trade
increased to that degree, that we were the exchange of Christendom;
foreign merchants looking upon nothing so much their own, as what they
had laid up in the warehouses of this kingdom; the royal navy in number
and equipage, very formidable at sea; lastly, for a complement of all
these blessings, they were enjoyed under the protection of a King of the
most harmless disposition; the most exemplary piety; the greatest
sobriety, chastity, and mercy, that ever Prince had been endowed with:
But all these blessings could but enable, not compel, us to be happy. We
wanted that sense, acknowledgement, and value of our own happiness,
which all but we had; and we took pains to make, when we could not find
ourselves miserable. There was in truth a strange absence of
understanding in most, and a strange perverseness of understanding in
the rest. The court full of excess, idleness, and luxury; the country
full of pride, mutiny, and discontent. Every man more troubled and
perplexed at what they called the violation of one law, than delighted
or pleased with the observance of all the rest of the charter. Never
imputing the increase of their receipts, revenue, and plenty, to the
wisdom, virtue, and merit of the crown; but objecting every small
imposition to the exorbitancy and tyranny of the government. The growth
of knowledge and virtue were disrelished for the infirmities of some
learned men, and the increase of grace and favour to the church was more
repined and murmured at than the increase of piety and devotion in it
were regarded."
Such was the lowering calm of ungrateful discontent, which ushered in a
fearful season of crime and punishment, described at large by one who
was an illustrious actor on that eventful stage, and composed his
history, "that posterity might not be deceived by the prosperity of
wickedness into a belief that nothing less than a general combination of
an whole nation, and a universal apostacy from their religion and
allegiance, could, in so short a time, have produced such a prodigious
and total alteration; and that the memory of those, who out of duty and
conscience have opposed that torrent which overwhelmed them, may not
lose the recompence due to their virtues, but having undergone the
injuries and reproaches of that, might find a vindication in a better
age."
In describing the scenes which ensued, "when an infatuated people, ripe
and prepared for destruction, plunged by the just judgment of God into
all the perverse actions of folly and madness," he reads us such
important lessons as must strike an enlightened public, if recalled to
their attention. He tells us, by fatal experience, "that the weak
contributed to the designs of the wicked, while the latter, out of a
conscience of their guilt, grew by desperation worse than they intended
to be. That the wise were often imposed upon by men of small
understandings. That the innocent were possessed with laziness, and
slept in the most visible article of danger, and that the ill-disposed,
though of the most different opinions, opposite interests, and distant
affections, united in a firm and constant league of mischief, while
those whose opinions and interests were the same, divided into factions
and emulations more pernicious to the public than the treasons of
others. Meanwhile the community, under pretence of zeal for religion,
law, liberty, and parliament, (words of precious esteem in their just
signification,) were furiously hurried into actions introducing atheism,
and dissolving all the elements of the Christian religion."
So great were the miseries incident to civil commotion, so soon did the
mask fall off from those pseudo-patriots, that all parties except the
creatures of the ambitious Cromwel, ardently looked for the restoration
of their imprisoned King, as a termination of their own sorrows, as well
as of his misfortunes. And when that hope was frustrated "by the most
consummate hypocrisy and atrocious breach of all law and justice," the
iron pressure of those times of pretended liberty and equality that
ensued, led every one, who had not by some unpardonable crime hazarded
his own safety, to welcome back the son of the royal victim to the
constitution and honour of England, with such rash exuberance of
confiding loyalty, that, by intrusting to his careless hand the full
possession of unrestrained power, they laid the foundation of future
contests and confusion. Such were the prospective evils with which the
Oliverian usurpation afflicted the state, while in the department of
morals, piety was brought into such contempt by the extravagance of
fanatics, and the detected cheats of hypocrites, that atheism and
profaneness grew popular, as being more open and candid in their avowed
profligacy. The oppressive, or as his admirers call it, the vigorous
government of Cromwell humbled the proud spirit of Englishmen, who had
often revolted at the excessive stretches of prerogative under their
legitimate kings; and this new habit of submission, added to a deep
repentance for their late crime, so struck the independent character of
the nation, that a cabal of atheists and libertines persuaded an
unprincipled Prince that he might as easily found his throne on what was
then deemed the firm basis of despotism, as many of the Continental
princes had done. If, as Englishmen, we blush at the disgrace of a King
sold to France, and a court and nation abandoned to such licentious
contempt of all Christian obligations, that even decency is compelled to
consign their polite literature to oblivion, we must seek for the seeds
of this twofold degradation in the times of which I propose to exhibit a
familiar portrait, illustrated by imaginary characters and events, but
carefully compared with warranted originals.
It remains to say something of the conduct of this design. Public events
will be stated with fidelity. Historical characters shall be but
sparingly combined with feigned actions, but, where they, are, great
care shall be taken that they be neither flattered, calumniated, nor
overcharged; and, I believe, they may be found to have behaved in much
the same manner to others, as I shall represent them to do to the
imaginary persons whom I bring on the scene. The long space of years
which this narrative embraces, is, I know, a great abatement of its
interest. It is a fault which could not be avoided without falsifying
chronology at a period familiar to every well-read person, or losing
sight of the admonitory lesson which the tale was intended to convey.
I know that there is no small share of hardihood in my attempt: Bigotry,
superstitious adherence to existing institutions, exclusive partiality
to a sect, and pertinacious resistance to the increase of liberal
information, are well-sounding epithets easily applied, and too grateful
to the million to want popularity. Those who write with no higher motive
than to please the prevailing taste, must beware of touching upon topics
which are likely to rouse the hostile feelings of self-importance, and
to disgust would-be statesmen and intuitive divines. Ridicule will never
disprove those opinions which were held by the wisest and most
illustrious persons that England ever produced. Should I be so
unfortunate as to provoke hostility where I look for co-operation;
erroneous or undeserved censure shall not induce me to enter into a
controversy with those whom I believe to be sincere champions of
religious truth, and to whose labours I am consequently bound to say,
"God speed," though they may consider me as a doubtful ally, if not an
enemy. To these I would address the dying words of the celebrated
non-juror Archbishop Sancroft to his subscribing chaplain, Needham--"You
and I have gone different ways in these late affairs, but I trust
Heaven's gates are wide enough to receive us both. I always took you for
an honest man. What I said concerning myself was only to let you know
that what I have done I have done in the integrity of my heart,
_indeed in the great integrity of my heart_." Thus, only anxious to
defend and support constitutional principles, I shall plead guilty to
many errors in taste, in the construction of the fable, as well as in
the style of the narrative, and throw myself on the mercy of the Public
with regard to those points.
[1] Lord Clarendon.