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OMITTED CHAPTERS
OF
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
WOL. II.

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LONDON
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HISTORY §ITY OF MWA
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FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLES I. TO THE EXPULSION
*
OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT BY CROMWELL :
BEING
OMITTED CHAPTERS OF THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
BY ANDREW BISSET.
IN Two WoLUMEs—Vol. II.
LONDON :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1867 •
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PREFACE.
THIS VoIUME completes the narrative of a period of English
History which I think I may truly say has never before
been written—the period extending from the death of
Charles I. to the expulsion of the Long Parliament by
Cromwell, and usually called the period of the Common-
wealth. As I have shown in the preceding volume, the
English Government at this time was not that which the
Greeks called a democracy and the Romans a republic. It
may perhaps be best described, in the language of those
who carried it on, as a government differing essentially
from that sort of government which the experience of that
age had proved to be a bad government—“the government
of a single person.” So strong was the conviction of those
men on this point, that Cromwell himself, even after he -
had concentrated all the powers of government in his own
person, is reported to have said, “I approve the govern-
ment of a single person as little as any man.” Although
1 James Harrington, the author of
“The Commonwealth of Oceana,”
though of no authority as a practical
politician, records accurately enough
the opinions of the most sagacious prac-
tical politicians of that age, when he
says, in his tract on “The Grounds
and Reasons of Monarchy,” published
in his works (folio, London, 1700):
“I could never be persuaded but it was
more happy for a people to be disposed
of by a number of personsjointly inter-
ested and concerned with them, than to
be numbered as the herd and inherit-
ance of one, to whose lust and madness
they were absolutely subject.”
* This remark of Cromwell is re-
ported to have been made with reference
vi PREFACE.
==
the term “Commonwealth’’ may be objected to as some-
what ambiguous, for the reasons already stated," neverthe-
less it will be convenient to entitle this work, “A History
of England under the Government called the Common-
wealth,”—a Government which began on the death of
Ring Charles I., and ended on the expulsion of the Parlia-
ment by Cromwell.
The new materials which I have used in the composition
of this and the preceding volume are the Minutes of the
Council of State, contained in forty MS. volumes of the
original draft Order Books of that Council. It may, I trust,
not be deemed impertinent to state here that my attention
was first directed some years ago to these MS. minutes of
the proceedings of the Council of State by the kindness
of the English historian of Greece, Mr. Grote, who then
said that when, some years before, he went through
the State Paper Office, the gentlemen who showed him
these volumes of original MS. minutes told him that they
to Harrington’s “Commonwealth of
Oceana,” which work Harrington
dedicated “To His Highness the
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth
one foreign writer on English History
asserts that no party could govern
like Cromwell. This remark is only
true as applied to the state of things
—-f-
>
of England, Scotland, and Ireland.” A
commonwealth in the sense of a re-
public with such “a Protector” is a
contradiction in terms. The Caesars
might as well be called “Protectors of
the Roman Republic,” or the boa-con-
strictor the protector of the rabbit he
has swallowed. The truth of the
assertion by which Cromwell qualifies
his disapproval of “the government
of a single person,” that he “was
forced to take upon him the office
of a high constable, to preserve the
peace among the several parties of the
nation,” is involved in the other asser-
tion that Cromwell governed better
than the Long Parliament. Indeed,
after Cromwell’s death, when it was
found, by those who attempted to
cause the public affairs to revert to
their former channel, that, as the
writer of the preface to Ludlow's
Memoirs observes, “Oliver had so
choked the springs that the torrent
took another course; ” and after a
short period of struggle among parties,
Monk performed his part, and sold the
nation to Charles II. But the remark
above cited is totally inapplicable with
regard to the Parliament and Council
of State which Cromwell expelled on
April 20, 1653, and which governed
infinitely better than Cromwell.
* See Vol. I. p. 33.
PREFACE. vii
had never yet been examined (as far as he knew) by any
English historian.
There are one or two features of the present volume to
which I wish to advert. In the first place, it appears a
duty to truth to make the limits of the duration of the
Government called the Commonwealth thoroughly under-
stood, inasmuch as, that Government having been con-
founded with the usurped military despotism of Cromwell,
nearly all the English historians have thus given to Crom-
well all the credit due to the good government of the
statesmen of the Commonwealth, and to the statesmen of
the Commonwealth all the discredit due to the bad
government of Cromwell. These two volumes being de-
voted to the history of the Government called the Common-
wealth, strictly define the limits of its duration—namely,
from February 1, 1643, to April 20, 1653, a period of four
years and somewhat less than three months. During that
period, if they had done nothing else, they created a navy
which defeated the most powerful navy, commanded by
the greatest admirals, the world at that time had ever
seen. And during the last ten months of their existence
their great Admiral, Blake, besides minor achievements,
such as the destruction of the French fleet under the
Duke de Vendôme, fought four great pitched battles,
three of which he won ; and the defeat in the fourth,
when he maintained for many hours, with thirty-seven
ships, a fight against ninety-five, commanded by Tromp,
tended rather to raise than to lower his own and his
country’s naval renown. So that, even by writers not
favourable to the Commonwealth, this has been called
“the annus mirabilis of the English navy.” To the
credit of all this, as well as to the credit of the battles
won against the Dutch in June and July 1653, after his
viii - PREFACE.
expulsion of the Parliament, Cromwell has not the shadow
of a claim. r
In the second place, a comparison of the preparations
made by the Government of Queen Elizabeth against the
Spanish Armada, with the preparations made by the
Council of State of the Commonwealth against the aggres-
sion of the Dutch naval power (really far greater than the
Spanish), and also against a projected invasion of England,
about the time of the invasion of the Scots which led to
the Battle of Worcester, by the forces of some of the Conti-
mental despots, under the command of the Duke of Lorraine
(evidence of which I have found in the MS. minutes of the
Council of State), leads to a clear demonstration of the
vast superiority of the statesmanship of the Council of
State of the Commonwealth over that of Queen Elizabeth,
and her much-lauded Lord Treasurer and other councillors.


HISTORY
OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND
FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLES I. TO THE EXPULSION
OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT BY CROMWELL :
BEING
OMITTED CHAPTERS OF THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
BY ANDREW BISSET.
IN Two Volumes—Vol. I.F.
I.ONDON :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1867
| The right of translation is reserved.]
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CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
Projected invasion of England and Ireland by an army under the
command of the Duke of Lorraine . * & tº * &
Causes of the change in the conduct of the Netherlanders between
1585 and 1651
The divine right of kings
Divine-right tyranny
Divine-right nobility . * © e g e
Foreign enemies of the Commonwealth of England .
Progress of despotism in Europe ©
Vigilance of the English Commonwealth .
England alone against the world . ge § º e tº
Work which the English Commonwealth had before it . . . e
Committee of the Navy, of which Sir Henry Vane was the most
active and able member . * te tº & * &
PAGE
5, 6
7–14
15, 16
17, 18
19, 20
21, 22
23, 24
25, 26
27, 28
29
Admiral Blake, and incident in his last action, showing the height to
which he raised the naval power of England e &
CHAPTER VIII.
Admiral Blake's birth and early life
Cromwell's taste for practical jokes . 3.
Admiral Blake’s character iº
Blake's defence of Lyme and Taunton
Cromwell and Blake
Cromwell and the Stuarts &
Importance of the navy at that time
Blake opposed to the King's execution
Revolt of a part of the fleet from the Parliament
30, 31
32–36
37, 38
39
40, 41
43, 44
45, 46
46, 47
49, 50
51, 52
X CONTENTS.
The Commonwealth men and the “grandees of the House and
Army” . º g - * º º e tº e -
The Council of State of the Commonwealth and Queen Elizabeth's
Council .
Reconstruction of the navy
The Commonwealth flag
Prince Rupert * - * º º e tº tº e
Story told by Admiral Sir William Penn of Prince Rupert's cruelty.
Rupert escapes from Kinsale Harbour
Letter from Blake to Cromwell
Blake sent in pursuit of Rupert
Increase of the navy
Instructions to Blake
Instructions to Ascham . & e º w - º
Orders for regulating the proceedings of the Council of State .
Committee of the Navy, consisting of Sir Henry Vane, &c.
Additional instructions to Blake
Instructions to Popham . . º e º * © g &
Rupert enters the Tagus, and is protected by the King of Portugal .
Rupert's device for destroying Blake e º ſº & tº
Blake attacks the Brazil fleet, and Rupert escapes with his ships
A treaty of peace concluded with the King of Portugal, on the
conditions insisted on by the Commonwealth of England .
Blake destroys Rupert's fleet .
PAGE
53, 54
55, 56
57, 58
59
60–62
63, 64
65
67, 68
69, 70
71
73, 74
75
77,78
79
81, 82
83
84, 85
86
88
88, 89
90–92
92, 93
93, 94
95, 96
97
98-102
103, 104
105, 106
Rupert's luck in escaping & e e tº e
Difference between courage and strength of muscle .
Penn's unsuccessful pursuit of Rupert
Blake captures four French ships .
Royalist pirates in the Scilly Isles
The Scilly Isles surrendered to Blake
An example of the tact of the Council of State
CHAPTER IX.
Strickland recalled from Holland - e *
St. John and Strickland sent ambassadors to Holland
Character of Oliver St. John . ... s. º
The English ambassadors insulted in Holland
Character of the Dutch Government at that time . tº $
The Council of State's instructions to their ambassadors in Holland
107
108
108–111 .
112, 113
114–116
117, 118


-
CONTENTS.
The Council's vigilance against the invasion of England by the
King of Scots from Scotland, and by the Duke of Lorraine
from Dunkirk and Ostend e º tº * s
The English ambassadors recalled and thanked by Parliament
St. John's speech to the Dutch commissioners at taking leave .
CHAPTER X.
Some of the English nobility, who possessed the most accurate
knowledge of the qualities of kingship, were members of the
Government called the Commonwealth
Charge of bribery against Lord Howard of Escrick.
Wiscount Lisle and Algernon Sydney
Character of Algernon Sydney
Cromwell's illness in Scotland
A natural and an artificial aristocracy
Strong position of the Scottish army º - e
The Scottish army moves southward by rapid marches
Misstatements of Mrs. Hutchinson .
Election of the new Council of State º - e
Energy, courage, and prudence of the Council of State
Zeal of the people against the enemy
Invasion of England by the Scots . ſº - e
“The Broad Place at Whitehall,” August 10, 1651.
Great exertions of the Council of State .
Imputed timidity of Sir Henry Vane
145, 146, 148
PAGE
119–122
123–125
124
126, 129.
127
129
130–138
139, 140
141, 142
143, 144
145
146, 147
149–151
151
Charles Stuart proclaimed traitor . e • & *
Zeal of the Parliamentary army, and of the country generally, against
the King . © & e º
Great contrast between 1651 and 1660
Cry for “a free Parliament” .
Skirmish at Warrington . e
Army of Lambert and Harrison . e
The Scots with their King reach Worcester e •
Defeat of the Earl of Derby by Colonel Robert Lilburne.
The Council of State relax not their exertions.
“The business of the Duke of Lorraine”
The English Governments of 1588 and 1651
155
157, 158
153–167
168–170
171, 177
172
173
174, 175
178
179
180
181
182, 183
183, 184
185, 186
YII CONTENTs.
CHAPTER XI. N '.
Important battles fought on the Severn and Avon .
Cromwell's arrival before Worcester
Operations of Lambert's troops
Battle of Worcester • º
Total defeat of the King's army
The King's conduct in the battle o
False panegyric on the King . . . . . . .
Scotch students among the prisoners
Fscape of the King to France.
Disposal of the prisoners º e e e º e *
Execution of the Earl of Derby, Sir Timothy Featherstonhaugh, and
Captain Benbow te e
Stirling Castle surrendered to Monk
Monk takes Dundee by storm
lºs:---
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i.
i.
P.;
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CHAPTER XII.
The Council of State disband the militia . * e * -
Ludlow's erroneous statement that Cromwell dismissed the militia .
Inconsistencies of Cromwell's character, and consequent difficulty of
analysing it . * @ :
Cromwell's alleged designs º e -> - e º e
Lands of the yearly value of £4,000 (in addition to £2,500 per
annum formerly granted to him) settled on Cromwell and his
heirs . tº tº ſº e
Reception of Cromwell by the Parliament e
The Navigation Act passed by the Parliament. e º º º
The union of England and Scotland, and the abolition of monarchy
in Scotland, enacted by the Parliament of England .
The Judges sent from England to administer justice in Scotland found
“so much malice and so little proof” against sixty persons ac-
cused of witchcraft at the last circuit that none were condemned
A committee to consider of fit persons to write “the history of these
times”
Naval abuses . g º º e *
Pleas for the Long Parliament tº tº- ſº • ,
Question of a new Parliament
The new Council of State
Death of Ireton
M
PAGE
187—189
~ 190
191, 192
193, 194
195
196
197–200
201
202, 203
204–214
213
214
214, 215
217
218
219, 220
221
222
223
224
225
226
226, 227
228, 229
230, 231
232, 233
234, 235
236


CONTENTS.
The old English nobility *
The new English nobility e $ e
Of the men most distinguished in the great En
17th century, Oxford produced as many as
The Inns of Court lifeguard and Ironside office
Ireton's military career . ſº © gº ©
The army's representation to Parliament in
glish civil war of the
Cambridge
I'S
1647, drawn up by
Ireton with the assistance of Cromwell and Lambert
- The military genius of Cromwell and Marlborough .
2– Why Ireton was a check on Cromwell's ambition . º g e
Lambert appointed Ireton's successor in Ireland
Cromwell's children e gº
Lambert's quarrel with the Parliament
Character of Lambert
Meeting at the Speaker's house
A settled question reopened . * e *
Committee of the Admiralty and Navy for 165
An assistant to Milton appointed
John Lilburne © * g
Clarendon's character of Sir George Ayscue
tº
CHAPTER XIII.
The Dutch ambassadors extraordinary received
liament with punctilious courtesy
Audience given by the Parliament to the Dutch ambassadors .
Contrast between 1585 and 1652
by the English Par-
Orders of the Council of State for the management of treaties.
“The business of Amboyna ’’ tº
Work of the Council of State at this time
Rapid rise of the Dutch naval power e
Advantages of the Dutch * º e &
Advantages arising from the composition of the English Council of
State tº * gº
Orders made by the Council of State for regulating their proceedings,
xiii
PAGE
237,238
239, 240
241, 242
243, 244
245, 246
247–250
251
252–255
255
257–259
259–261
261,262
263
263—267
268
269, 270
270, 271
272
274–277
278, 279, 283
280–282
283, 284
285,286
287, 288
289, 290
291, 292
293
which have not been given before
Contrast between 165% and 1853 . © *
Blake's commission to hold and execute the p
lace of Admiral and
General of the fleet or fleets of the Commonwealth of England
for 1652 .
294
295, 296
296,297
xiv CONTENTS.
-
->e-
PAGE
Great energy and vigilance of the Council of State at this time . 297, 298
Appointment of John Thurloe as secretary to the Council of State -
on the death of Walter Frost the elder e 299
“The prologue to the tragedy” . . . . . . . . 300–302
CHAPTER XIV.
Contrast between the government of the Commonwealth and the
government of Charles II. 303, 304
1652, the great naval epoch of England . 305, 306
Breaking the enemy’s line . º º º 307, 308
Real cause of the war on the part of the Dutch 308
England's claim to the honour of the flag tº * - 309
The Dutch, while they profess to desire peace, prepare for and mean
Wal” s º - 310
Martin Harpertz Tromp . º º * h º e 311, 312
Resemblance of the character of Blake to that of Nelson . e 313
First meeting of Blake and Tromp in Dover Road . º & * 315
First fight between the Dutch and English, and the beginning of
the Dutch war º e * º º º * . 317–320
Blake thanked by the Parliament and the Council of State 321, 322
Great exertions of the Council of State to strengthen Blake's fleet 322–324
Commissions to the vice-admirals of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk,
Rent, Sussex, and Hants to press seamen * e 325
Great loss of ships and goods by the Dutch . - g º . 327, 328
The Parliament charge the Dutch with attempting to destroy their
fleet by surprise during a treaty, and continue to make vigorous
preparations for war e g - e e o . 329–334
Departure of the Dutch ambassadors, who act the part of spies 335, 336
Blake's northern expedition º o & s º . 337–339
Blake and Tromp, when preparing for action among the Shetland
Isles, separated by a sudden tempest º e 340–343
Blake returns from the North . * . . © ſº tº º 344
De Witt substituted for Tromp in the command of the Dutch fleet . 345, 346
Blake defeats a French fleet under the Duke of Vendôme 347, 348
Policy of the Parliament much sounder than that of Cromwell 348, 349
Blake defeats the Dutch admirals, De Witt and De Ruyter, off the
North Foreland ſº * * * º º . . . 349–356
Thirty frigates ordered to be built . 356
Petition of Sir Oliver Fleming 357


Why Queen Christina of Sweden said to Whitelock, “these Hol-
landers are lying fellows” . . º e
Orders relating to the fleet e
Soldiers sent to serve on board the fleet . s e e e
Proof that Cromwell, till within a few weeks of his turning round
upon them, was keeping up the appearance of being the sincere
friend of Vane, Scot, and Sydney . & o
Battle of Portland . g º e * - ©
Eirst day's battle
Second day's battle
Third day's battle .
WOL. II. al
CONTENTS. XV
- PAGE
The Council of State's care to seek for fit men, and never to prefer
any for favour nor by importunity . e º tº e 358
Arrival of ambassadors from the King of Denmark 359
CHAPTER XV.
A fleet of English merchantmen, laden with naval stores, seized by
the King of Denmark in the harbour of Copenhagen 360–362
Good treatment of the Dutch prisoners in England. 363, 364
Disposal of Dutch prize-goods by the Council of State . 365, 366
Case of Captain Warren—prompt and energetic proceedings of the
Council of State e e - e. - g º . 366, 367
The Council of State commit a blunder in sending twenty ships at
this time to the Mediterranean, and thereby crippling Blake's
Channel fleet . º © º º e o g 368
New Council of State for 165; 369, 370
Effect of crippling the Channel fleet © g © © © 371, 372
Meeting of the English and Dutch fleets . 373
3attle of Dungeness . - g º e e g º 374–376
Deane and Monk appointed joint generals of the fleet with Blake 381
Great exertions of the Council of State to reinforce Blake's fleet
and to strengthen the coast garrisons º e o . 377–382
The captains of ships hired for the public service to be chosen by the
State . © * - ſº © e & © . 383 and note
Rigour of the press warrants . © e 383
The Council's mode of dealing with foreign powers . 384
English captives at Algiers 385
Labours of the Council of State 386
Their relations with foreign powers º e º 387–389
. 388, mote
390
391
393, 394
396, 397
398, 399
400
401, 402
xvi. CONTENTS
E.
i.
:
-
=
+=s.
-
--
Results of the Battle of Portland .
Effect of the battle . s a
Blake's exploits in the last ten months
CHAPTER XVI.
The worshippers of success
T'ay of the parliamentary army g e tº
Extra pay of two regiments out of the Lord-General’s contingencies
amounted to giving Cromwell a sort of Praetorian guard
Effect on the Romans of the despotism of Julius Cæsar .
A good despotism is a false ideal . .
Consequences of a great crime committed by a great man
Effects of the apotheosis of Cromwell . . s g tº tº
The retrenchment of forces and garrisons displeased and alarmed
Cromwell
Sir Roger Twysden's testimony against the Long Parliament .
Integrity of Vane, Ireton, Blake, Scot, Ludlow, Sydney, and others.
Cromwell's conversation with Whitelock, in which he says, “What
if a man should take upon him to be king?” . g e
Contrast between Cromwell in 1652 and Cromwell in 1647 .
Answer to the worshippers of Cromwell e e te
Answer to the defenders of Cromwell–Cromwell's course not a poli-
tical necessity. & te & e g c e
Good and bad great men ſº tº g tº e *
The Parliament endeavour to countermine Cromwell by drafting
soldiers into the fleet g & * & † e
JEffect of Blake's victories on Cromwell . - gº
Cromwell secures the concurrence of Lambert and Harrison
Ludlow's conversation with Harrison . tº gº
Cromwell calumniates the Parliament wº o &
IProof of the falsehood of his charges against the Parliament
Cromwell endeavours to obtain the concurrence of Calamy and others
of the clergy . g & tº . ~ * tº & g ſº
The Parliament determine on an immediate dissolution . . &
Alteration in Cromwell's plans g * e tº e &
Meeting of members of the Parliament and officers of the army at .
Cromwell's lodgings on April 19, 1653 . * tº t sº
Inconsistency of Cromwell's statement—“the Parliament being ready
to put the main question for their dissolution, we have been
necessitated to put an end to this Parliament”.
PAGE
403–405
406, 407
408
410, 411
412–414
415
416
417
418, 419
419
421, 422
423, 424
425, 426
427–429
430
431
482-434.
435
436
437
437, 438
438–440
440, 441
441, 442
443, 444
445, 446
447, 448
449–451



CONTENTS.
Illegal and treasonable character of the meetings at Cromwell's
lodgings . §
The eve of an evil deed . tº & © & g & e e
Caesar and Frederic II. of Prussia were not deceived by the shallow
sophistries by which inferior minds have sought to defend evil
deeds . . . . e o & e & & tº
Vane, Scot, Sydney, and Harrison meet together in Parliament for
the last time . g * e
The twentieth of April, 1653 . & * ſº tº ſº ſº tº
Cromwell first gets into a rage with the Parliament for not putting
an end to their sitting, and then gets into a new rage when he
finds them putting the question for passing the hill for their
dissolution . g tº e g º g
Whitelock's inaccurate statement
Cromwell insults and expels the Parliament . e ſº . .
Who was the “juggler”—Vane or Cromwell ?
Cromwell's madness was madness with method in it
Departure of the great Parliament .
And of the Council of State
Cromwell's unproved assertions • e & g & º
Cromwell could have proved them if they had been true by printing
and publishing the bill. Why then did he not print and publish
xvii
PAGE
452, 455
453
453, note
456
457
459
the bill? . - e
End of the Commonwealth . e * e tº *
Cromwell's Council of State . ſº e ſe © g g º
Character of the Commonwealth men . º tº e
Character of their successors .
Consequences of Cromwell's conduct wº o g * *
The glorious career of Blake .
Remorse e e ſº * º ſº * e ſº tº
460 and note
461–464
464
465
466
467, 468
469–471
472, 473
474, 475
476, 477
478,479
481,482
483,484
485
486, 487
#,
:.49
:-:-

HISTORY OF ENGLAND
THE COMMON WEALTH.
CHAPTER WII.
FROM that day in July, 1644, when the armies of the King
and Parliament of England encountered each other on
Marston Moor, the armies of the Parliament had marched
to uninterrupted victory. Hitherto, however, they had
only had to contend against enemies not very much exceed-
ing themselves in number. But a new aspect of affairs
now presented itself.
A great change had come over the scene between 1585,
when the Netherlanders had shown an eager desire to be-
come the subjects of Queen Elizabeth, and 1648–9, when
the English Parliament brought their King to a public
trial and a public execution; declared their Government
to be a Commonwealth, or Republic, like the Government
of the Netherlands, and invited the Netherlanders, or
Hollanders (as they then began to be called), to enter into
a close alliance—to come, as they termed it, to “oneness”?
with them.
But the times had changed, and with the change of
times a strange change had come over the minds of the
| Speech of Thomas Scot, in Richard Cromwell's first Parliament, reported
in Burton's Diary.
WOL. II. B
2 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
Netherlanders. The Netherlanders of the latter years of
the 16th century had shown themselves most anxious and
eager to obtain the aid of their fellow-Protestants of Eng-
land, against the sacerdotal and royaltyranny of the Pope
of Rome and the King of Spain. The Netherlanders of
the middle of the 17th century, so far from receiving in
a frank and friendly spirit the proffered alliance of the
Protestant English Parliament, were actually willing to
employ against England not only their own naval power,
then the greatest in the world, but to transport into Eng-
land and Ireland troops, under the command of the Duke
of Lorraine,” one of the commanders of the army of the
Catholic League in the Thirty Years' War, just ended—
troops who had formed a portion of the disciplined brigands
of Wallenstein and Tilly, and who had shared in the storm
and sack of Magdeburg, when that unfortunate city was
given up to pillage for three days, and thirty thousand of
the inhabitants were put to the sword. And these foreign
'brigands were to be joined by large bodies of the native
Irish, according to a treaty between the Duke of Lorraine
and Wiscount Taff,” and were thus to be enabled to accom-
plish that work of murder, rapine, burning, torture, and
‘endless abominations, which Charles I. and his Medici-
Bourbon Queen had before planned, by way of punishment,
for their rebellious English subjects, and in particular for
London, “the rebellious city,” as they called it.”
By the treaty mentioned, the forces of the Duke of
Lorraine were to be brought by the Dutch fleet into
* The evidence of this from MS., as p. 212 et seq. Wishart's Memoirs of
well as printed documents, will begiven Montrose, p. 32 et seq.; and Appendix,
in subsequent pages. p. 422 et seq. Baillie's Letters and
* See Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. Journals, vol. ii. pp. 73, 74 (Edinburgh
389, 390. Second edition, London, 1841). Append. to Carte's Ormonde,
1721. pp. 3, 4 et seq. Carte's Letters, vol. i.
* Burnet's Mem. of the Hamiltons, pp. 19, 20. Burnet's Hist, vol. i. p. 74,

1651.] PROJECTED INVASION OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND. 3
Ireland, “in order to extirpate all heretics out of that
nation, to re-establish the Romish religion in all parts of
it, and to restore the Irish to their possessions; all which
being performed, he should deliver up the authority to the
Ring of Great Britain, and assist him against his rebel-
lious subjects in England: that all Ireland should be
engaged for his reimbursement: that Galway, Limerick,
Athenree, Athlone, Waterford, and the fort of Duncannon
should be put into his hands as cautionary places.” "
It appears, however, from some MS. minutes of the
Order Books of the Council of State, which I will quote
subsequently, that a landing was to be made in England,
on the coast of Suffolk, whence the foreign brigands of this
Duke of Lorraine could, as they fancied, easily march
upon London, which they had been given to understand
was a city far more wealthy and far more defenceless than
Magdeburg. If they had been told that the English were
an unwarlike race—a race to be plundered and butchered
more easily than the burghers of Magdeburg—and
should ever chance to come to a death-grapple with the
soldiers of Dunbar and Naseby, they might peradventure
find themselves somewhat out in their reckonings.
The name of the Duke of Lorraine—of whose family
the House of Guise was a branch—occurring here, reminds
us of one significant feature of this great English Civil
War; reminds us that this war bore a certain affinity to the
great conspiracy of the Pope and the King of Spain and
the Duke of Guise, against the liberties, civil and religious,
of all mankind. For (besides the fact of this Duke of
Lorraine's having been one of the commanders of the Catho-
lic League in the Thirty Years' War) in the preceding age,
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 389, 390.
R 2
4 . COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
when there was no hope of issue of Henry III. of France,
it had been the determination of Henry’s mother, Cathe-
rine de’ Medici, that the children of her daughter, the
Duchess of Lorraine, should succeed to the throne of
France.
A branch of the sovereign House of Lorraine, which
settled in France in the beginning of the 16th century,
bore the title of Dukes of Guise—a name of evil omen,
for it is indelibly connected in history with the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew; all the preliminary details of that
transaction having been arranged by Henry Duke of
Guise, a man of an infamous pre-eminence, even in an age
fruitful in deeds of treachery and murder. James W. of
Scotland had married a daughter of the House of Guise,
who after the death of James, being for a time Regent
of Scotland, attempted to establish despotism and Roman-
ism, and to extirpate heresy after the fashion of the House
of Guise. His daughter was Mary Stuart, the grand-
mother of Charles I. And if Charles I. and his Queen
(who, as well as himself, was related to the House of Guise
and Lorraine), had not precisely the same relation of
cause and effect with the Irish massacre of English Pro-
testants, which Henry of Guise had with the St. Bartholo-
mew massacre of French Protestants, the Irish massacre
would certainly not have taken place if the Irish had not
believed that the Queen encouraged it."
The Earl of Essex told Bishop
Burnet, “That he had taken all the
pains he could to inquire into the
original of the Irish massacre, but
could not see reason to believe the
Ring was accessory to it; but he did
believe that the Queen did hearken to
the propositions made by the Irish,
who undertook to take the Government
of Ireland into their own hands, which
they thought they could perform, and
then they promised to assist the King
against the hot spirits of Westminster.
With this the insurrection began, and
all the Irish believed the Queen en-
couraged it.” (Hist, of His Own Times,
vol. i. p. 41.) The editor of the Ox-
ford edition (1833) of Burnet's History,

1651.] THE NETHERLANDS IN 1651. 5
Such were some of the allies with whom the Nether-
landers of 1651 thought fit to leage themselves against
the Protestant Parliament of England.
What was the cause of this great change in the con-
duct of the Netherlanders? There were several causes.
In the first place, by the Peace of Westphalia, con-
cluded in October 1648—which put an end not only to the
Thirty Years' War in Germany, but to the Eighty Years'
War between Spain and the Netherlands—the United States
of the Netherlands were recognised as independent States.
In the second place, while the naval power of Spain had
in a note on this passage, merely cites
the opinion of Mr. Brodie (History of
the British Empire, vol. iii. p. 199,
note, Edin. 1822), that he “cannot dis-
tinguish between the King and Queen,
considering their dark correspondence
and joint plots.” Mr. Morrice, the
chaplain of the first Earl of Orrery
(before Lord Broghill), in his Memoirs
of that nobleman, prefixed to the Earl
of Orrery's State Letters (2 vols. Dub-
lin, 1743), tells the following story
respecting the commission under the
Great Seal under which the Irish pro-
fessed to act: “Lord Orrery took an
opportunity one day, when alone with
Muskerry, who happened then to be
in a pleasant open humour, to ask him
how the rebels obtained that com-
mission, which they showed, under the
King's great seal? Lord Muskerry
answered, ‘I will be free and unre-
served with you. It was a forged
commission, drawn up by Walsh and
others, who having a writing to which
the Great Seal was fixed, one of the
company very dexterously took off the
sealed wax from the label of that writ-
ing, and fixed it to the label of the
forged commission. Whilst this was
doing, an odd accident happened,
which startled all present, and had al-
most entirely disconcerted the scheme.
The forged commission being finished,
while the parchment was handling
and turning, in order to put on the
seal, a tame wolf, which lay asleep by
the fire, awakened at the crackling of
the parchment, and running to it,
seized it, and tore it to pieces, not-
withstanding all haste and struggle to
prevent him : so that, after their pains,
they were obliged to begin anew, and
write it all over again.” Lord Orrery,
struck with the wickedness of this
transaction, could not refrain express-
ing himself to that purpose to Lord
Muskerry, who laughingly replied, ‘It
would have been impossible to have
held the people together without this
device.’”—Memoirs of Roger, Earl of
Orrery (pp. 73, 74), prefixed to the
State Letters of Roger Boyle, the
first Earl of Orrery, Lord President
of Munster in Ireland (2 vols. Dub-
lin, 1743). He was the fifth son of
Richard, Earl of Cork, and in 1628,
when only seven years old, was created
Lord Broghill.
6 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
F----------------,
t -—

been rapidly declining, the naval power of the Netherlands
had been as rapidly increasing, so that at this particular
time, the middle of the 17th century, it was the greatest
naval power then in the world; and its masters looked
upon England with very different sentiments from those
of their predecessors, who had earnestly and humbly
sought for the aid of England against the tyranny of
Spain.
There was a third cause, the consideration of which will
throw light upon a very prominent feature in the history
of Modern Europe. - :
About a century and a half or, at most, two centuries
before this time, the doctrine of the sanctity and divinity
of kingship had arisen in Europe. It would delay us too
long to trace here all the causes of that rise. It will be
sufficient to say that the rise was sudden and rapid, and
that the idea soon acquired great strength. Of both the
rapid rise of this idea, and the strength which it speedily
acquired, a proof is afforded in the general horror excited,
about the beginning of the 16th century, by the rebellion
or treason (as it was called) of the famous Constable de
Bourbon against Francis I. of France; while, not many
years before, the frequent conspiracies of Louis XII., when
Duke of Orleans, were viewed as common occurrences
of no extraordinary criminality. This idea spread itself
over Europe, and of course passed into England, where it
coloured the writings of the most popular writers, who
were then the dramatists. Shakspeare's dramas are full
of the “divinity that doth hedge a king,” and Shakspeare’s
dramas had far more influence on the popular mind than
Milton’s pamphlets. A cotemporary of Shakspeare, Sir
Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, the friend and
biographer of Sir Philip Sidney, has a line, of which one
1651.] THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS. 7
of the lines oftenest quoted from Pope’s “Essay on Man”
is but an alteration—a line embodying an apophthegm.
pointedly expressive of the spirit of kingship of the
16th century: “Men would be tyrants, tyrants would be
gods.”"
Under such circumstances, it is evident that the daring
men who publicly cut off a king’s head, though solemnly
professing that they did that execution as an act of public
justice, were, considered merely as politicians, playing a
very dangerous game: for all their great deeds, in which
they manifested so much genius and so much valour, were
insufficient in so short a time to extirpate from the popu-
lar mind the motion that “there is a divinity doth hedge a
king,” ”—even a king like Charles IX. of France, and
a queen like his mother Catherine de’ Medici. Such force
had this notion acquired, that a Protestant archbishop
actually published at the end of his character of that com-
pound of blood and mud, that embodiment of all the vices
of Tiberius without his talents, James I., these lines,
“penned,” says the archbishop, “by a learned divine”:
Princes are gods; oh do not then
Rake in their graves to prove them men tº
It is hardly too much to say, that this idea of the divinity
| Pope's line is, “Men would be
angels, angels would be gods.” (Essay
on Man, Epist. i. v. 126.) What Can-
ning, in “New Morality,” has said of
a very inferior versifier, may be said
here of Pope, that he “mars the verse
he steals.”
* According to Lord Leicester, when
the Act for taking away kingly go-
vernment was proclaimed by the Lord
Mayor and fifteen Aldermen in full ex-
change time, “the people murmured
and began to rise, but were soon sup-
pressed by some troops of horse that
were ready in arms.”—Lord Leicester's
Journal, May 30, 1649, p. 73, in Syd-
ney Papers, edited by R. W. Blencowe
(London, 1825).
* Archbishop Spottiswood's History
of the Church of Scotland, vol. iii.
p. 270, Bannatyne Club edition.—The
lines quoted by Spottiswood furnish a
curious verification of the line just
quoted from Lord Brooke.
8 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
of kingship threw back civilisation more than two hundred
years. It cast its aegis over the most revolting cruelties
and the most hideous crimes when performed by crowned
criminals. No stronger proof of its force could be afforded
than the fact that, in 1584, the Netherlanders, who had
been fighting so long and bravely for liberty of conscience,
before they applied to Queen Elizabeth, sent an embassy
to Henry III. of France, that worthy son of Catherine
de’ Medici, offering to him the sovereignty of their country:
to that Medici Valois, of whom the English ambassador,
Sir Edward Stafford, speaks in almost precisely the same
terms in which the French ambassador, Count Tillieres,
speaks of James the I.:—“ Unhappy people ! to have such
a king, who seeketh nothing but to impoverish them to
enrich his favourites, and who careth not what cometh
after his death;” and whose court was a place of which
“impiety the most cynical, debauchery the most unveiled,
public and unpunished homicide, private murders by what
was called magic, by poison, by hired assassins, crimes
natural, unnatural, and preternatural, were the common
characteristics.”
It is in accordance with common experience that a person
of weak intellect, like James I., should give himself com-
pletely up to the dominion of this idea of the divinity of
kingship. But it is not a little surprising to find a person
of strong intellect, like Queen Elizabeth, fascinated” by it
* Motley's History of the United
Netherlands, vol. i. p. 40.
* “Princes,” said Queen Elizabeth.
in her reply to the Netherland envoys
(Feb. 7, N.S. 1587), “transact business
in a certain way, and with a princely
intelligence such as private persons can-
not ºmitate.” (Hague Archives, MS.,
cited in Motley's History of the United
Netherlands, vol. ii. p. 199.) If Her
Majesty had been fated to come into
contact with the intelligence of some
of the statesmen and statesmen-soldiers
of the English Commonwealth, she
might have seen reason to change her
opinion of the respective qualities of
princely intelligence and the intelli-
gence of private persons. All King
1651.]
THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS. 9
to such an extent as to contemplate a marriage with one
of the sons of Catherine de’ Medici—of that abandoned
James's writings, and particularly his
“True Law of Free Monarchies” (in
which he expounds his notions of his
kingly power, and builds, on those
passages in the Book of Samuel in
which God, after condemning the
desire of the Jews to have a king,
commands Samuel to show them what
oppressions their kings would execute
upon them, conclusions in direct
logical opposition to the premisses),
discover a singular feebleness and
obliquity of understanding. It is re-
markable that a person of so very
different an order of intellect from
Ring James as Hobbes, should have
attempted to make the same passage
of Scripture subservient to the same
purpose. Hobbes, in his “Leviathan,”
quotes the passage in even a more
mutilated shape than his royal pre-
decessor in his “True Law of Free
Monarchies.” Hobbes says: “Con-
cerning the right of kings, God him-
self, by the mouth of Samuel, saith.”
IIe then quotes the verses (1 Samuel
viii.) from the 11th to the 17th, and
thus proceeds : “This is absolute
power, and summed up in the last
words, Ye shall be his servants.”
Again, taking care to leave out the
19th verse, which is, “Nevertheless the
people refused to obey the voice of
Samuel; and they said, Nay, but we
will have a king to reign over us” (in
which suppression of the truth he even
exceeds James in dishonesty), Hobbes
goes on thus: “When the people heard
what power their king was to have,
yet they consented thereto, and said
thus—We will be as other nations, and
our king shall judge our causes, and
go before us to conduct our wars. Here
is confirmed the right that sovereigns
have, both to the militia, and to all
Judicature, in which is contained as
absolute power as one man can pos-
sibly transmit to another.” (Levia-
than, part ii. chap. xx. p. 105, folio.
London, 1651). A strange confirma-
tion In the first place, the voice of
the Jewish multitude is quoted as if it
were the voice of God, although the
context expressly declares the contrary:
and in the second place, might not
the Jewish people choose to be go-
verned by a king without that being
any argument whatever, either for the
divinity of the institution, or for its
being adopted by other nations 2 Some
writers have of late years objected to
Hobbes being called “the apologist of
tyranny.” I also at one time thought
that Hobbes had been hardly dealt
with, and the effect produced in the
way of clear thinking, on the subject
both of mentaland political philosophy,
by his powerful and original under-
standing, not sufficiently appreciated.
But the example of flagrantly dis-
honest dealing with evidence which I
have here pointed out, appears to place
a man in almost as bad a category as
being the apologist of tyranny, or the
apologist of anything else that is bad.
The mode in which King James and
Hobbes have dealt with this passage
of Scripture is the more remarkable,
when contrasted with the use made of
it by Sir John Fortescue, Lord Chief
Justice and afterwards Lord Chancel-
lor under King Henry VI., in his work
on the “Difference between an Abso-
lute and Limited Monarchy” (pp. 4–6,
edn. London, 1714). Fortescue, writ-
ing before kingship had set up its
10 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
woman, half poisoner, half procuress, who had by cold
calculation plunged her sons into the deepest debauchery,
that their enervated faculties might render them the slaves
of her will in political affairs, and whose daughter, the
Medici-Valois Messalina, the Bartholomew-massacre wife
of Henry of Navarre, made the miniature Court of Pau
almost equal, in vice if not in splendour, the voluptuous-
ness and infamy of the Louvre. It is impossible that
Queen Elizabeth could have been entirely ignorant of the
character of the Court of the Louvre at that time, and
of the Medici-Valois family at the head of it; and the only
explanation of her conduct would seem to be that the
boundary-lines between vice and virtue, between good and
evil, were for the time effaced. Indeed, the cotemporary
evidence seems to lead to this conclusion. For instance,
Brantôme, who was considered one of the most accom-
plished noblemen and courtiers of Charles DK., while he
recounts actions that stamp the authors of them as tho-
roughly deserving Samuel Johnson’s coarse but expressive
character of Lord Chesterfield, always begins or ends by
informing us that those personages were très-belles et très-
hommétes dames or demoiselles. The most abandoned of the
female worthies whose lives he details, are characterised
by him as both illustrious ladies and good Christians. But
this was quite in keeping with the moral and religious
code of an age which designated Philip II. of Spain “the
most Catholic * and Henry III. of France “the most
Christian king.”
claim to divinity, deals honestly with
the passage, and says that God was
greatly offended with the desire of the
Jews to have a king, and charged
Samuel to declare unto them the vari-
ous oppressions and evils they would
be subjected to under a king. The
idea of turning this passage of Scrip-
ture into an argument in favour of the
divinity of kingship is one of the most
audacious perversions of truth in the
whole history of imposture.
1651.) PURITANISM IN THE 16TH AND 17th CENTURIES. 11
There is an incident connected with that contemplated
marriage of the English Queen with the effeminate and in-
cestuous Medici-Valois, which stamps in strong characters
the cruel and tyrannical disposition of the daughter of that
Tudor tyrant—that amiable man, according to a modern
historical discovery, who had the misfortune to have so
David Hume thus tells the story: “A
Puritan" of Lincoln’s Inn had written a passionate book,
which he entitled ‘The Gulph in which England will be
swallowed by the French Marriage.” He was apprehended
and prosecuted by Order of the Queen, and was condemned
to lose his right hand as a libeller.” “A Puritan of Lin-
!” Hume probably thought, when he branded
this unfortunate gentleman with the term Puritan, that he
many bad wives |
coln’s Inn
was a religionist of the intolerant and tyrannical Presby-
terian type, which in the 18th century, as well as in the
* “Puritanism—a form of religion
which Elizabeth detested, and in which,
with keen instinct, she detected a mu-
tinous element against the divine right
of kings.” (Motley's History of the
United Netherlands, vol. i. p. 351.) It
is but justice to Leicester to add what
Mr. Motley says of him in the same
place: “Leicester, to do him justice,
was thoroughly alive to the importance
of the crisis. On political principle,
at any rate, he was a firm supporter
of Protestantism, and even of Puritan-
ism.” (Ibid.) While there can be little
doubt that there was a large substra-
tum of materials against the character
of Leicester, there can be as little doubt
that upon that was built a large super-
structure of falsehood by the Jesuit
emissaries of the Pope and the Spa-
niard—probably the largest, the most
adroit, and the most unscrupulous
dealers in falsehood in the whole his-
tory of the world. And the Jesuits
themselves were outdone in their own
trade by “the most Catholic king,”
Philip II. of Spain, whose falsehood
was upon a level with his bigotry and
cruelty: “To lie daily, through thick
and thin, and with every variety of
circumstance and detail which a genius
fertile in fiction could suggest, such
was the simple rule prescribed to Far-
nese by his sovereign. And the rule
was implicitly obeyed, and the English
sovereign thoroughly deceived.” (Ibid.
vol. ii. p. 311.) If Queen Elizabeth
really possessed the practical ability for
which she has long had credit, it seems
incredible that she should have placed
any faith in the words either of Philip
II., or of Farnese, or of the Medici, or
the Valois. Would Cromwell or Vane
have been duped by them 2 Certainly
not.
12 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
19th in Scotland, gave the same meaning to the term
“free church” that James I. gave to “free monarchy"—
that is, free to do what they liked, and to hinder all other
people from doing what they liked. And he probably
did not know that the royal and courtly and sacerdotal
tyrants of the 16th and 17th centuries sought to brand
with the title of Puritan all men who objected to vices not
only natural but unnatural, and to wearing the attire of
women, and not of women only, but of harlots. For it
was not only in the polluted halls and chambers of the
Louvre that the degraded Henry III., the last of that
Medici-Valois brood, exhibited himself attired like a woman
and a harlot, and surrounded by a gang of “minions”
such as the world had not seen since the age of Nero and
Sporus; but a few years later, Somerset and Buckingham,
with their master James, revived in the palace of White-
hall the infamies of the Louvre, the horrible crimes as
well as the revolting vices. Mrs. Turner, who was executed
for being accessory to the murder of Sir Thomas Over-
bury, though the real criminals, the Earl and Countess of
Somerset, were allowed to escape by “James the Just,”
shortly before her execution exclaimed against the court,
“wonders the earth does not open to swallow up so wicked
a place l’” Surely Admiral Blake had some ground for
the saying attributed to him, that “monarchy was a kind
of government the world was weary of l’”
* “Osborne says that Somerset and
Buckingham laboured to resemble
women in the effeminacy of their dress,
and exceeded even the worst in the
grossness of their gestures.”—Note by
Sir Walter Scott, in his edition of
Somers' Tracts, vol. ii. p. 488.
* Conference between Dr. John Whit-
ing and Mrs. Turner, Nov. 11, 1615.
(MS. State Paper Office.) -
*Sir Edward Hyde to Secretary
Nicholas, Madrid, Feb. 9, 1651. (Cla-
rendon State Papers, vol. iii. p. 27.)
Aubrey, after mentioning that Dr.
William Harvey, the discoverer of the
circulation of the blood, was wont to
Say that “man was but a great mis-
chievous baboon,” continues (Letters
1651.] THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS. 13
Such was the tyrannous force in that age of the idea of
the supposed necessity of kingship, that the hardy and
industrious Netherlanders, who had thrown off the yoke
of one crowned tyrant, and had been fighting for sixteen
years rather than return to that yoke, were willing to
accept the sovereignty of a king like the last Valois,
because that thing “ the semblance of a kingly crown had
on.” Failing in their attempt to induce the Medici-Valois
to accept the sovereignty of their country, the Nether-
landers then applied to Elizabeth Tudor, who, albeit but
the great-granddaughter of a Welsh squire and a London
citizen, stood as punctiliously upon the divinity of her
queenship, as if she had actually been, what Walter Scott
has called her, “the daughter of a hundred kings.” What
between her own ill-temper and penuriousness, and the
want of decision and clearheadedness of her principal min-
ister, Burghley, “ puzzled himself and still more puzzling
to others,” small was the benefit which the Netherlanders
reaped from Queen Elizabeth. If she had sent as her
Lieutenant-general a man of ability, instead of the shal-
low-brained intriguer and court favourite, Leicester, the
Netherlanders might perhaps have reaped more benefit,
even from the small assistance she sent them. But no
great soldier or sailor, no Cromwell or Blake, could ever
and Lives, vol. ii. p. 381): “He would
say that we Europeans knew not how
to order or govern our women, and
that the Turks were the only people
who used them wisely. . . . He had
been physician to the Lord-Chancellor
Bacon, whom he esteemed much for
his wit and style, but would not allow
him to be a great philosopher. Said
he to me, ‘He writes philosophy like
a lord-chancellor,’ speaking in de-
rision.” Morally and socially, the
court-party of that age, including
some men of the highest intellectual
endowments (Harvey himself, Bacon,
and Hobbes), were indeed “but great
mischievous baboons.” If the Puri-
tan insurrection against those moral
baboons had not succeeded, Harvey
might have had his wish, and England
might have fallen to the moral, social,
and political condition of Turkey.
* Motley's History of the United
Netherlands, vol. i. p. 88.
14 COMMONWFALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
flourish under the poisonous shade of a court minion, such
as Leicester or Buckingham.
Besides the charge of incapacity, charges of frightful
crimes were made against Leicester; and if these charges
were never satisfactorily proved, it must be remembered
that proof was extremely difficult in that age, in the case
of a royal favourite. In the case of Somerset and the
murder of Overbury, there had been less profound artifice
than Leicester was master of; and, besides, the King was
then tired of Somerset, and wished for an excuse to be rid
of him. If Leicester was innocent of perhaps the foulest
crime imputed to him, the murder of his first wife—and all
that a coroner's inquest, said to be rather hostile than
otherwise, could make of it was that the unfortunate lady
was killed by a fall downstairs"—he must be considered as
a deeply calumniated man; for the tale has now taken such
root, that his very name calls up the phantom of a man
who murdered poor Amy Robsart, that he might have the
chance of marrying a red-haired, hook-nosed shrew, with
vol. i. p. 367.) The trial of Somerset
for the murder of Overbury was
allowed to take its course. Why?
Because the infatuation of King
James had been transferred from
Somerset to Buckingham. The same
James, for reasons best known to him-
self, had murdered the Earl of Gowrie
and his brother, Alexander Ruthven,
and put forth a tissue of the most as-
tounding falsehoods about a pretended
* In that age murder, as well as for-
gery of handwriting, was an art as
carefully studied as the professions of
law and physic. And if the unhappy
Amy Robsart was killed in the manner
described by Scott, in “Kenilworth,”
her dead body would present the same
appearances which a fall downstairs
would produce. What then could the
coroner's jury make of it? As Mr.
Motley truly says, “The secret deeds
of a man placed so high can be seen
but darkly through the glass of con-
temporary record. There was no tri-
bunal to sit upon his guilt. A grandee
could be judged only when no longer a
favourite, and the infatuation of Eliza-
beth for Leicester terminated only
with his life.” (United Netherlands,
conspiracy; so that the Divine Right
and Jacobite writers of after-times,
who profess to believe a man who was
the greatest liar in Christendom after
the death of Philip II. of Spain, tell
us nursery-tales about an affair they
call the ‘Gowrie Conspiracy.’
1651.] DIVINE-RIGHT TYRANNY. 15
thin lips and black teeth. Be that as it may, it is certain
that Leicester was an arrogant, intemperate, and incapable
man—incapable, at least, in everything that constitutes a
man either a great statesman or a great soldier. For he
was capable enough in all the base arts by which court
favourites become rich and powerful—in filling his purse
by the sale of honours and dignities, in violent ejectments
from and in the manufacture of fraudulent titles to land,
in rapacious enclosures of commons, in taking bribes for
matters of justice, and of supplication to the royal authority.
Besides the charges of poisoning (if but half of which could
be believed, neither Caesar Borgia, nor his father nor sister,
were more accomplished in that infamous art), Leicester
was also accused, falsely or not, of forging various letters
to the Queen to ruin his political adversaries, and of plots
to entrap them into conspiracies—playing first the accom-
plice, and then the informer.
The career of this Robert Dudley, created by Queen
Elizabeth Earl of Leicester, was worthy of his origin:
for he was the grandson of that “horseleech” lawyer,
who, with Empson, had been the instrument employed
by Henry VII. in oppressing and pillaging the people of
England, and who, as a reward for his subservience to
the tyrant father, Henry VII., lost his head in the first year
of the reign of the tyrant son, Henry VIII. One principal
1 Lord Bacon, in his “History of their master's grist. Dudley was of a
Ring Henry VII,” says: “And askings
do more easily find instruments for
their will and humour than for their
service and honour, he had gotten for
his purpose, or beyond his purpose,
two instruments, Empson and Dudley,
whom the people esteemed as his horse-
leeches and shearers—bold men and
careless of fame, and that took toll of
good family, eloquent, and one that
could put hateful business into good
language. But Empson, that was the
son of a sieve-maker, triumphed
always upon the deed done, putting off
all other respects whatsoever.”—Hist.
of the Reign of King Henry VII., p.
380 (in vol. iii. of Montagu's edition
of Lord Bacon's Works).
16 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
mode of oppression and plunder employed by him and
Empson, had been an abuse of that incident of the feudal
tenures, termed Escheat, by which, under certain circum-
stances, lands escheated or fell back to the lord who gave
them, which in the case of the tenants in capite would be
to the king. The officers to whom it belonged to enquire
into the escheats that fell to the crown were called es-
cheators. The abuses to which this office was liable are
thus set forth in the preamble of the Statute 1 Henry VIII.
cap. 8, intituled “The Act of Escheators and Commis-
sioners:”—“Forasmuch as divers of the king’s subjects
lately have been sore hurt, troubled, and disherited by
Escheators and Commissioners, causing untrue offices to
be found, and sometimes returning into the courts of re-
cord offices and inquisitions that were never found, and
sometimes changing the matter of the offices that were truly
found, to the great hurt, trouble, and disherison of the king's
true subjects,” &c. Thus from the abuse of this office, the
word “escheator” came to have the meaning of a fraudulent
person, and gave rise to the common words “cheat” and
“cheater.” Shakspeare, in the following passage, uses the
word at once in its old and new sense: “I will be cheater to
them both, and they shall be exchequers to me.” From this
escheator, cheater, or cheat descended the magnificent court
favourite, Queen Elizabeth’s “sweet Robin,” the husband of
the ill-starred Amy Robsart, and the husband or lover of
at least two other nearly as unfortunate women. For the
“gipsy” (as he was called, from his dark complexion) was,
to say the least, a dangerous man; and the power which
he owed neither to genius nor to virtue, but to the caprice
of the imperious woman who then filled the English
throne, had been used for the ruin of many women as
well as many men. The infatuation of Queen Elizabeth.
1651.] DIVINE-RIGHT NOBILITY. 17
in favour of Robert Dudley will ever remain one of the
greatest stains on her memory. Indeed, the whole history
of these Dudleys is a most instructive illustration of the
government of the Tudors, under which the old nobility—
who, whatever their faults, were warriors and statesmen—
gave place to a nobility of pettifoggers, of horseleech
lawyers, and court minions, the basest of all things
wearing a human shape. The peerages of, perhaps,
the three greatest historical families in the English an-
nals (the De Montforts, the Percys, and the Nevills) were
absorbed by the Dudleys, whose cognizance was heredi-
tary baseness; and the great historic titles of Leicester,
of Northumberland, and of Warwick, as if to show into
what a depth of degradation tyranny can plunge a nation,
were conferred upon the brood of the horseleech of Henry
VII. If we must have a hereditary nobility, it should be
distinguished by something else than the faculty of giving
to the old word “escheator” the new meaning of common
cheat or cheater—by something else than hereditary servi-
lity, hereditary falsehood, cruelty, insolence, and baseness.
That age of transition from the old barbarism to the new
civilisation, presents a picture of startling contrasts: of
the genius of Shakspeare, of Spenser, of Raleigh, of Bacon,
side by side with the rack, the faggot, and the branding-
iron; of Leicester, the gorgeous minion of court-favour,
rustling in satin and feathers, with jewels in his ears—
such was the taste of the Tudor Queen, who spoke the
language and could relish the genius of Shakspeare–side
by side with William the Silent, in coarse unbuttoned
doublet, and bargeman’s woollen waistcoat. No wonder
that, when the gorgeous courtier of Queen Elizabeth went
to Holland, “everybody wondered at the great magnifi-
cence and splendour of his clothes.” The Hollanders had
VOL. II. C
18 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
not been used to consider Satin and feathers, and jewels in
the ears, as essential portions of the materials that went
to make either a statesman or a soldier. And in the short
period of England’s annals—namely, from February 164;
to April 1653, a period of less than five years—when Eng-
land was governed by men who were statesmen in the best
sense of the word, neither satin, nor feathers, nor jewels in
the ears, formed a portion of the machinery of government.
This man, this Robert Dudley, owed his favour with
Queen Elizabeth—whose infatuation for him lasted till his
death, when, true to her character, she had, while drop-
ping a tear upon the grave of “sweet Robin,” sold his
goods by auction to defray his debts to herself—to the
beauty of his person, and the talent which he possessed of
adroit adulation towards women. He is described by co-
temporaries as “tall and singularly well-featured, of a sweet
aspect, but high-foreheaded, which was of no discommen-
dation.” But when we look at his face, as the painter’s art
has transmitted it to us, we see little to convey to us the
favourable impression which that face gave to Queen
Elizabeth. For though his forehead may be high, it
wants breadth; the Small aquiline nose and small mouth
want the character of intellectual power; the eyebrows
are weak, and the eyes somewhat sinister; and altogether
the face and head have nothing of the grandeur, either of
resolution or of intellect, which stamps the outward aspect
of a great man, a great statesman-soldier, such as the
time and the occasion imperatively demanded, but such as
is never found lackeying either an imperious woman like the
last Tudor, or an unsexed man like the last Medici-Valois,
or the first Stuart.
And the Netherlanders—although they had known what
it was to be governed by a great man, having but just lost

1651.] FOREIGN ENEMIES OF THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH. 19
William the Silent, assassinated by the hellish contrivance
of the Pope and the Spaniard—were willing, from the sup-
posed necessity of kingship, to submit to the government
of such a poor imitation of a statesman-soldier as this
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
Now the Rump of the Long Parliament of England,
whether the fact be viewed with approbation or disappro-
bation, were the first in Modern Europe to change a
monarchy into another kind of government, and to discard
the idea of the necessity of kingship. It will be seen that
the English Government of that time had, by their auda-
cious act of declaring that kingship was not only not a
necessity, but that “the office of a king in this nation
was unnecessary, burthensome, and dangerous,” added
another solid reason to the monarchical despots of Europe
for their destruction. For those accursed heretics, who
by discarding the Papal supremacy had incurred the deadly
enmity of the Pope, and of such tyrants and bigots as the
Rings of Spain and France, had now to heresy added the
frightful crime of regicide; and were therefore now more
than ever to be exterminated, as being at Once the enemies
of God and of God’s representatives on earth. The conse-
quence was that the English Government of the middle of
the 17th century had far more formidable enemies to
encounter than the Government of Queen Elizabeth in
1588, when the Armada, which Spanish bombast styled
“ the Invincible,” was ready to sail for the conquest of
England.
For it seemed as if all the kings and all the nations of the
earth were suddenly banded together, for the destruction
of those daring men who had brought their king to a pub-
lic trial and a public execution, and now called themselves
C 2
20 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
the Commonwealth of England. French ships" made
prize of all English vessels not strong enough to resist
them. A fleet, under Prince Rupert, after having com-
mitted great plunder of English merchant-ships, and
many atrocious acts of piracy, was protected in Portugal
from the fleet of the Parliament. In Russia, the English
merchants were insulted and illtreated by the Government.”
Ascham, the agent of the Parliament in Spain, was assas-
sinated in Madrid, and the assassins were not punished
by the Government of Spain. Dorislaus, soon after his
arrival as the agent of the English Parliament, was
assassinated in Holland, and the assassins were permitted
to escape, though the Dutch Government was a republic
in name. Even the Senate of Hamburgº ventured to
make hostile demonstrations. :
A glance at the state of Europe at that time will show
at once that the Parliament of England stood alone; for
the Senate of Hamburg, if it had been disposed to be
=
* I will give one or two cases from —Order Book of the Council of State,
the MS. Minutes of the Council of die Lunae, Dec. 24, 1649. “That the
State. On one day, the 9th of Janu- draught of the letter to the Emperor
ary, 16#, there is a statement of of Russia be reported to the House by
losses of the English merchants by Sir James Harrington.”—Ibid. Jan. 4,
French ships, to the amount of 60,260l. 16##, MS. State Paper Office.
in the ship ‘Talent;' of 9,838. in the
* “That a letter be written to the
‘Mercury;’ of 32,763!. in the ‘Grey- Senate of Hamburg, to take notice
unto them of the restraint which they
have laid upon the heads of our mer-
chants there, for taking the engage-
ment, to expostulate the matter with
them,” &c.—Order Book of the Council
of State, die Martis, Jan. 1, 16#,
MS. State Paper Office. “That the
Latin letter prepared by Mr. Milton,
and now read at the Council, to be
sent to the Senate of Hamburg, be
fair-written, signed, and sent.”—Ibid.
Jan. 4, 16#.
hound;’—for all which letters of marque
or reprisal were granted, under the
great seal of the High Court of Admi-
ralty.—Order Book of the Council of
State, Jan. 9, 1633, MS. State Paper
Office.
* “That a letter be prepared to be
sent to the Emperor of Russia, con-
cerning the denying our merchants to
trade in Russia as formerly; and that
the merchants do, give in the titles and
the matter of the letter to the Council.”
1651.]. PROGRESS OF DESPOTISM IN EUROPE. 21
friendly, was not strong enough to be an ally of any im-
portance, and the Dutch Government, for reasons which
will be mentioned presently, was far more likely to be an
enemy than a friend. In all the other European Govern-
ments the principle of military despotism had by this time
already acquired such force, as to regard the principle of
constitutional liberty, for which the English Parliament
fought, as dangerous and hateful; and all the European
tyrants, from Moscow to Copenhagen, from Stockholm to
Madrid, would have rejoiced to see England effaced from
the list of nations, if her people could not be reduced to
the servile condition of their own subjects.
Since the middle of the 15th century the progress of events
had all been in the direction of absolute monarchy. Any
popular liberty which had existed in the Italian Republics
had been long dead. In Spain, in France, in Germany, even
in Denmark and Sweden, all constitutional bulwarks
against the excesses of kingly power had perished, or were
perishing. The nobles were impoverished and powerless.
The sword had fallen from their hands, and from those of
their once warlike vassals, into those of standing armies;
and the power which belonged to them, when they were a
military aristocracy, had passed to the kings who were mas-
ters of the standing armies. The Free or Hanse Towns had
lost their independence, and were at the mercy of the nearest
robber-tyrant, who pursued his own and his family’s aggran-
disement with some diplomatic jargon in his mouth, and
with an utter disregard of all the laws of God and man.
As in the time of the Idumean Emir, “the tabernacles of
robbers prospered.” Except in the Parliament of England,
not a vestige remained of those assemblies of freemen, in
which, among the ancient Germans and Franks, the affairs
of the nation were debated and settled. All authorities,
22 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. VII.
corporate or individual, which had protected the people from
the encroachments of their kings, lost, one after another,
their power, and then totally disappeared; as, according to
the Greek superstition, at the incantation of the Thessalian
witches, the stars, one by one, faded from the face of
heaven :-
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain;
As Argus’ eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd,
Clos'd one by one in everlasting rest.
Throughout far the greater part of Europe the forms as
well as the substance of liberty passed away, and every
kingly lust had uncontrollable dominion."
... " Ranke's “Nine Books of Prussian
History,” of which an English transla-
tion (by Sir Alexander and Lady Duff
Gordon) has been published, under the
title of “Memoirs of the House of Bran-
denburg, and History of Prussia during
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen-
turies,” but which might be more aptly
intituled a “Panegyric on the House of
Brandenburg, and History of the Pro-
gress of Despotism in Europe,” show
how that family robbed their own
subjects of their constitutional or tra-
ditional rights, as they afterwards
robbed their neighbours of their pro-
perty. A maxim of the Elector Fre-
derick William was, that “no privilege
should stand in the way of a needful
reform.” And his historian says, “We
have seen how little regard he paid to
traditional rights.” “He was without
mercy in dealing with individual op-
ponents, as the example of Paul Ger-
hard sufficiently proves. His rule was
by no means easy or popular. We
find complaints that words were rec-
koned as criminal as deeds.” All this,
which will remind the reader of Eng-
lish history of Charles I. and Sir John
Eliot, is defended by the plea of “the
necessities of his position.”—Ranke,
vol. i. p. 72. Charles I. considered
the power to raise money without
consent of Parliament, and to keep a
standing army with it, to oppress and
insult his subjects, a “needful reform,”
called for by the “necessities of his
position; ” but he found the English-
man a rather more dangerous subject
to make experiments upon than his
cotemporary kings or electors found
Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Germans.
The sophistry by which the German
writers defend tyranny may be seen
by the following sentence, in which the
writer, after mentioning that at this
time the rights and liberties of
constitutional States were “greatly
abridged throughout Europe,” adds:
“Frederick William was compelled by
his position, and incited by the public
opinion of his country, to engage in a
similar contest, and to strive to de-
velope the idea of sovereignty as he

1651.] VIGILANCE OF THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT. 23
None of these Powers had, indeed, yet made anything like
a formal declaration of war. But though the English
Parliament expressed their disposition to friendly relations
with all their neighbours, they had good reason to know
that the intentions and feelings of the Powers of Europe
were the reverse of friendly to them, and that any oppor-
tunity for effecting their destruction would be eagerly laid
hold of. They were not, however, men to be taken off their
guard. They had emissaries everywhere. They paid con-
siderable sums for secret service; and they obtained
intelligence of the plots of their enemies in all parts of
Europe, from Stockholm to Madrid, and from Moscow to
the Hague."
had conceived it.”—Ibid. p. 48. He was
as much “incited by the public opinion
of his country” as Charles I. was
incited to levy ship-money by the
public opinion of his country.
* There are many minutes in the
Order Book relating to the “matter of
intelligence.” Thus (Feb. 27, 16#),
“That Mr. Scot be continued in that
trust for the matter of intelligence
which was executed by him the last
year, with the same power and salary
for the year to come.”—Order Book of
the Council of State, MS. State Paper
Office. “That the letter from Paris,
concerning the setting out of ships at
Toulon, be communicated by the Com-
mittee of the Admiralty to the Generals-
at-sea, and that they give order for all
expedition to be used in setting out
that fleet, which is to go southward
to join with those ships which are
under the command of Colonel Blake.”
—Ibid. March 6, 16#3. “That Mr.
Trost do send unto Mons. Augier so
much of Langton's examination as
relates to the business of Cezi, and to
desire him to write over [from France]
what he knows of the said Langton's
actions when he was at Beauvoir.”
“That Mons. Augier shall have liberty
to draw Bills of Exchange upon the
State to the amount of 300l., to be
paid at ten days' sight.” “That the
commands of this Council be renewed
to Mons. Augier to return hither
speedily.”—Ibid. April 3, 1650. This
Mons. Augier is often mentioned in
the Minutes, and they had many other
persons similarly employed. “That
Mr. Scot be empowered for the carry-
ing on the business of secret in-
telligence.” Feb. 17, 1643. “That
Mr. Challoner and Mr. Scot be ap-
pointed a Committee, to confer with
a certain man which shall be brought
unto them on Friday next.”—Ibid.
May 15, 1650. “That Mr. Scot, Mr.
Challoner, and Mr. Martin, being the
Committee of the Council appointed to
receive an account from Mr. Frost con-
cerning some business of importance,
be sent unto to meet on Monday morn-
ing next, in the Inner Chambers at
Whitehall.” — Ibid. May 17, 1650.
“You shall inform yourself what
24 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. ICHAP. VII.
The political aspect of Europe had altered considerably
since the year 1588 ('88, as it was called in England for a
century till another memorable '88, 1688, arrived)—the year
when Spain, under the impulse partly of fanaticism, partly of
ambition, had made an unsuccessful attempt to efface Eng-
land from the roll of nations. In the course of the interve-
ning sixty years, Spain had gone on declining, reaping the
fruits of the despotism which destroys at once the freedom,
the intelligence, and the valour of a nation. She was still,
however, in a condition to be a formidable member of a
confederacy against the Parliament of England. During
the same period France had grown in power, chiefly under
the able administration of Richelieu; and though Richelieu
was now dead, and Mazarin was his successor, of a genius
far inferior to Richelieu’s, the power of France was likely
to render her also a formidable member of a confederacy
against the English Parliament. As regarded the North
of Europe, the Thirty Years' War, the Peloponnesian war of
Germany, had just ended. -
From the day when the unfortunate Elector Palatine, the
son-in-law of James I. andfather of Prince Rupert, just a
year after he had been chosen King of Bohemia,was defeated
by Tilly under the walls of Prague, for twenty-eight
#:
designs are on foot, and what trans-
actions are made, in Germany, Poland,
Sweden, and Denmark, and thereof
give notice.”—Instructions for Richard
Bradshaw, Esq., Resident from the
(ommonwealth of England with the
Senate of Hamburg.—Ibid. March 30,
1650. “That the letters from France,
and the translation of that from Mon-
trose [an intercepted letter], be re-
ported to the House, and that Mr.
Scot be desired to make the report.”
-—Ibid. Feb. 14, 16#. “That a copy
of the intelligence from France, con-
cerning some ships now ready in
France to come for England, be written
out and sent to Colonel Deane, and the
original sent to the Committee of the
Admiralty, to be taken into considera-
tion by them.”—Ibid. June 3, 1650.
“That the sum of 500l. be paid to
Mr. Scot out of the exigent moneys of
the Council, for the carrying on of the
business of intelligence.”—Ibid. Mon-
day, August 9, 1652. There is an order
also, on the 12th May 1652, for the pay-
ment to Mr. Scot of 500l. upon account,
for intelligence,—Ibid. May 12, 1652.
1651.] ENGLAND ALONE AGAINST THE WORLD. 25
years Swedes, Danes, Spaniards, Scots, Dutchmen, French-
men, Hungarians, Transylvanians, Croats, had ravaged
Germany from the Baltic to the Rhine, and from the Vistula
to the German Ocean.
Whatever causes may be alleged for the origin and long
duration of that war—the advocates of Gustavus Adolphus
alleging the defence of the Protestant religion as the
moving force on his part, German writers, on the other
hand, alleging that his sole object was conquest and
self-aggrandisement—it will not be asserted by anyone
that the defence of nations against the encroachments
of kings had anything to do with it. From the German
Emperor to the Smallest German potentate who made
pretensions to sovereignty, all that host of kings might
be reckoned on as eager to join a confederacy against
destroyers of kings. And, what at first sight may seem
strange, the most formidable enemy that the English
Parliament had was a State which called itself a Republic
a State which England had assisted to shake off the
yoke of a foreign oppressor. This State was the Dutch
Republic, which was more powerfully excited to hos-
tility against England by commercial and naval rivalry,
than moved to friendship or alliance by similarity of
government, or remembrance of past good offices: a memo-
rable example of the operation of the various conflicting
interests that complicate the affairs and relations of nations,
producing war instead of peace, contention and rivalry
instead of alliance and co-operation.
But personal or family interests also entered into the
question. Maurice of Nassau, son of William the Silent,
Prince of Orange, had been, in 1584, elected their Stadt-
holder by three of the United Provinces, and from that time
the Stadtholdership had continued in the House of Nassau.
26 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
William, second Prince of Orange of that name, had
married a daughter of Charles I. ; and, besides that he
might naturally resent the death of his father-in-law, the
possible succession of his wife and children to the English
throne would be altogether shut out by the scheme of an
English Republic. The Prince of Orange might therefore
be expected to regard the men forming the Government
called the Commonwealth of England with somewhat
more than the average amount of princely antipathy.
Of these many enemies, the most formidable to England,
from their being maritime Powers of the first rank, were
the monarchies of France and Spain, and the so-called re-
public of Holland. While the hostility of the last-named
was awakened by a fierce spirit of naval and commercial
rivalry, that of the two former was excited by the re-
membrance of many defeats and humiliations, and animated
with all the inspiration of hatred. And to the old causes
of quarrel that had fitted out the Great Armada for the
destruction of the impious and blasphemous heretics who
had dared to throw off the Papal supremacy, was now
added a new cause—namely, that those heretics, those ene-
mies of God and the Pope, had become regicides, and
therefore enemies of God and kings, God’s representatives
upon earth. Add to all this that Scotland and Ireland, at
that time, stood to England in the relation much more of
enemies than of friends or allies, and we shall see that
England literally stood alone against the world.
Let us also remember that the Kings of Europe at that
time possessed three of the greatest Generals of modern
times—Condé, Montecuculi, and Turenne, any one of whom,
if he had effected a landing in England with an army, even
the Ironsides and their hitherto invincible leader would un-
doubtedly have found a far more formidable opponent than

1651. WORK OF THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT. 27
Ring Charles or any of his cavalier captains. And their
being prevented from effecting an invasion of England must
depend on England having the command of the sea—a.
result which must depend on her being able to defeat the
most powerful fleets, commanded by the greatest Admirals,
Tromp and Ruyter, that had then ever appeared in the
world. All these things being considered, will give us some
idea of the work which the Parliament of England had
before them about the middle of the 17th century.
A time may come again, when England may have work
on her hands as heavy as that which the Council of State
of 1650–1653 did so well. It will not, I apprehend, be
altogether a useless labour to endeavour to show how the
England of the middle of the 17th century faced and de-
feated her multitudinous enemies, the fleets of many kings,
and of one powerful republic.
We must go back beyond modern history, to the memo-
rable day when the great Asiatic despot sat on the rock
that overlooks Salamis, and saw his mighty host—ships by
thousands, and men in nations—assembled below, to find
something of a parallel to the odds which the Parliament
of England must now expect to meet in war. The contest
with the Spanish Armada has been called England’s
Salamis. But England’s achievements then were really
as nothing to what she did now, when not merely Spain
but all the kings and all the nations of Europe were
arrayed against her. At that time only once in modern
history had one nation been attacked by such a host of
enemies; and that was when, 150 years before, the Em-
peror of Germany, the Kings of France and Spain, the
Pope, and all the princes of Italy, formed the league
called the League of Cambray, and in a week conquered
28 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
all the provinces of Venice, when Venice was at the height
of her power. -
But there were physical as well as social and political
circumstances that rendered the case of England very
different from that of Venice. The English governing
Council of Forty were very differently constituted from the
Venetian Council of Ten : for while the latter consisted
of the dregs of an oligarchy, suffered to run out its full
course, the former was composed of a body of men, of
whom it has been not untruly said, that they were “a set
of the greatest geniuses for government the world ever
saw embarked together in one common cause.”" The
social and political institutions of England, which it was
the great aim of the Stuarts to destroy, had formed these
men; for their genius for government, if implanted by
nature, would not have produced the results it did without
that practical education which such institutions alone can
| Bishop Warburton's Note on ww.
281, 283, 284, of Epistle iv. of Pope's
Essay on Man.—I am tempted to add
here some further evidence of the ex-
traordinary care which the Council be-
stowed upon the most minute affairs.
“That the Committee appointed to
view the horses from Tutbury do ap-
point some fit person to expose to sale
to-morrow, in the afternoon, all the
colts which were brought up to the
mews, excepting only those which are
chosen out for the Lord-General, and
that he take a note of the prices
offered for every horse particularly ;
and, that being done, return the horses
into the stable, and give an account to
the Council thereof, to the end some
further order may be given concerning
them.”—Order Book of the Council of
State, July 3, 1650, MS. State Paper
Office. “That the Earl of Salisbury,
the Lord Howard, the Lord Lisle, the
Lord Grey, Sir William Armyne, Sir
Arthur Haselrig, Mr. Bond, Colonel
Morley, Sir Henry Mildmay, Sir Wm.
Constable, and Mr. Scot, or any three
of them, be appointed a Committee, to
consider how the horses and mares
now in Tutbury race may be so dis-
posed of, that the breed may not be
lost.”—Ibid. March 30, 1650. The
Council did not think horse-races ne-
cessary for keeping up the breed of
horses. “That the form of the letter
written last year to the several Sheriffs,
to prohibit horse-races, be brought to
the Council to-mórrow.”—Ibid. Feb. 9,
16443. “That Gregorie Julian, late
yeoman of the race at Tutburie, be dis-
charged from that employment, and
the whole business of the race com-
mitted to the care of Major Edward
Downes.”—Ibid. June 8, 1650,
1651.] COMMITTEE OF THE NAVY. 29
give. The physical circumstances in favour of England
were that, provided she prevented invasion from Scotland,
the sea, if she was master of it, would protect her from
all the world. \.
I have already called attention to the great energy and
ability with which the affairs of the Navy were conducted
by the Committee of the Council of State for administering
the affairs of the Navy." Of this committee the most active
and influential member was Sir Henry Vane, one of the
ablest and most indefatigable, as well as most incorrupt,
administrators recorded in history. But Vane, though a
great statesman, was not, and made no pretensions to be, a
fighting man. I believe I have carefully guarded myself
from being understood to say, that in such times a Council
of State or a Parliament could do the work that had then
to be done, further than the selection of fit instruments,
and the wise and economical management of the State’s re-
venues and other resources, could be called doing the work.
The work that had to be done absolutely required a great
General and a great Admiral. Such men were a necessity
of the time. But I cannot see how it follows that it was
also a necessity of the time that the great General or great
Admiral, who did the work of defeating the enemies of the
Parliament of England, should turn out the Parliament
from whom he had received his commission, and concen-
trate all their powers of sovereignty in his single person.
He might do so, but it was not a necessity of the situation,
further than being an incident or accident of the situation
that has so often happened that it may be apt to be mis-
taken for a necessity.
Now, in addition to the great energy and ability with
* See Vol. I. (p. 49, note 1) for an Committee of the Navy and the Com-
account of the distinction between the missioners of the Navy.
30 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VII.
which the Council of State conducted their naval affairs,
Providence sent to their assistance a man whose career, in
the conduct of their naval or foreign wars, was as singular
and wonderful as that of Cromwell had been in the con-
duct of their domestic wars. This man was Robert Blake,
the greatest Admiral, save one, in the records of the world;
and his career was the more singular in this—that though
it is usually considered essential to enter the naval pro-
fession in boyhood, and though Blake set his foot on deck
for the first time as a commander at the age of fifty, he
raised in two or three years the naval glory of the English
nation to a far greater height than it had ever before at-
tained. The height to which he raised it may be judged
from an incident in his last action, the destruction of the
Spanish fleet in the harbour of Santa Cruz, in one of the
Canary Islands. The Red Cross of England was descried at
daybreak from the Spanish galleons, and the well-known
red' flag, bearing the arms of the Commonwealth of England
embroidered in gold, visible at the maintopgallant mast-
head of one of the ships, showed that the redoubted Ad-
miral commanded in person. A Dutch captain, who had
seen something of the late war, happened to be lying at
that moment in the Santa Cruz roadstead with his vessel.
When he saw the English admiral’s broad pendant, he
went straight to the Spanish admiral, and asked his per-
mission to leave the roadstead with his vessel. The
Spaniard made light of his fears, saying that with the
castles, batteries, and earthworks, in addition to his naval
force, the position was impregnable. “For all this,” said
the Dutch captain, “I am very sure that if Blake is there
* The Admiral, or General at Sea (as ‘within a compartment: (or).’—Order
he was then called) bore the arms of Book of the Council of State, March 5,
the Commonwealth on a red flag, 1643, MS. State Paper Office.

1651.] ADMIRAL BLAKE. 31
he will soon be in the midst of you.” “Well,” replied
the Spaniard, “go if you will, and let Blake come if he
dare l’” The Dutchman returned to his ship, hoisted sail,
and left the place as fast as he could, and thereby escaped
the destruction that overtook all that floated within the
Bay of Santa Cruz on that fatal morning.
As Blake’s character was as disinterested, unselfish, and
stainless, as his heart was fearless, and his genius great
and fertile, some of the details of the early life of a man
so remarkable may not only interest the reader, but may
throw light on the characters of other remarkable men of
that remarkable time.
CHAPTER WITI.
As you enter the Old Church at Delft, the first object that
meets your eye is the magnificent mass of white marble,
which forms the monument of Martin Harpertz Tromp,"
and represents the Admiral lying at full length, with his
head resting upon a ship's gun; and below and around
him, carved in basrelief, symbols of the achievements of
his stormy and valiant life. The bones of the Englishman
who conquered him lie undistinguished by tomb or epitaph.
Robert Blake was born at Bridgewater, in August 1599,
the same year in the month of April of which Oliver Crom-
well was born; so that there were but three months between
the ages of these two men, one of whom was destined to
defeat all the domestic enemies, the other all the foreign
enemies, of the Parliament of England. Robert Blake was
the eldest son of Humphrey Blake,” an eminent Bridgewater
merchant at a time when the Severn was the great road of
England to all parts of the world, and when Bristol and
* The prefix Van to the name of the
great Dutch admiral, Tromp, though
used by Admiral Blake in his letter of
20th May, 1652, and also in the
minutes of the Council of State of the
same date, and subsequently by English
writers, does not belong to his name;
but it does belong to the name of his
second son, Admiral Cornelis Van
Tromp, created Count Van Tromp by
the King of Denmark, to whose as-
sistance, in his war with Sweden, Cor-
nelis Tromp had been sent with a
fleet in 1676,
* All the particulars that are known
respecting Admiral Blake's family
will be found collected with great care
and industry, from family papers and
other MS., as well as printed sources,
in Mr. Hepworth Dixon's very in-
teresting and valuable life of Admiral
Blake, entitled, Robert Blake, Admira!

1651.] ADMIRAL BLAKE. 33
Bridgewater were what Liverpool is now. There is nothing
very remarkable known of Blake's boyhood, as showing
that early predilection for an active, particularly a seafar-
ing life, which might help to account for his future emi-
nence as a naval commander. On the contrary, his early
bias seems to have been rather for study and meditation,
than for making cruises in any of his father's merchant-
ships; or, like Cromwell, robbing Orchards and pigeon-
houses; or, like Clive, climbing to the top of lofty steeples,
or forming the idle lads of the town into a predatory army,
for the purpose of exacting from the shopkeepers a tribute
of apples and halfpence. Aubrey does indeed mention,
on the authority of a cotemporary of Blake at Oxford,
that Blake “would steal swans.” But even this mani-
festation of an “excess of volition,” or of predatory
daring, if it is to be accepted as sufficiently authenticated,
might have been but a resource of Blake on those occa-
sions when his favourite mode of relieving his studies,
angling, “the contemplative man’s recreation,” proved, as
it often does, unsuccessful. The inclination of Robert
Blake’s mind being strongly turned to learning and
scholarship, after having made considerable progress in
Latin and Greek at the grammar-school of Bridgewater,
while he lived in his father’s house, at the age of sixteen
he was sent to Oxford, where he matriculated as a member
of St. Alban’s Hall in Lent Term, 1615. He soon, how-
ever, removed from St. Alban’s Hall to Wadham College—
at the request, it is said, of his father's friend, Nicholas
Wadham, a Somersetshire man, who had then recently
and Gencral at Sea (London, Chapman donald has done me the very great
and Hall, 1852). A new and cheap honour of revising the naval parts of
cdition of this work, in the preface to this narrative,” was published by
which Mr. Dixon says, “Lord Dun- Messrs. Chapman and Hall in 1858.
WOL. II. D
34 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
founded the college which bears his name, and in the
dining-hall of which a portrait of the great Admiral is
still shown, as that of the greatest man who had lived and
studied within its walls.
It is a remarkable circumstance, even in a very remark-
able life—particularly when we consider how unusual
anything like learning, in the sense of what is called
scholarship, is in the naval profession—that Blake was
probably the best scholar, the most learned man, of all the
eminent public men of his time, unless Milton be con-
sidered as one of those men. It seems at that time to
have been a common practice to leave the university with-
out taking a degree. Cromwell, Hampden, Wentworth,
Pym, Vane, appear to have done so. But Blake resided
at Oxford (first at St. Alban’s Hall, and afterwards at
Wadham College) altogether about eight years, and till he
took both his degrees (B.A. and M.A.), as Milton did at
Cambridge. Aubrey says that Blake “was there a young
man of strong body and good parts; that he was an early
riser and studied well, but also took his robust pleasures Of
fishing, fowling, &c. He would,” adds Aubrey, “steal
swans.” During Blake’s residence at Oxford, his father
had been unprosperous as a merchant, and Blake naturally
felt a desire to turn his classical acquirements to some
account. A fellowship having fallen vacant at Merton
College, of which Sir Henry Savile, one of James
I.'s knights, was at that time warden, Blake offered
himself as a competitor for it. But Sir Henry Savile
chose his fellows as his master, King James, chose his
* Aubrey's Letters and Lives, vol. ii. note, his authority for this short ac-
p. 241 (2 vols. 8vo., London, 1813), count of Blake at Oxford—“From
printed from the MSS. in the Bodleian H. Norbone, B.D., his contemporary
Library, &c. Aubrey subjoins, in a there.”


1651.] - ADMIRAL BLAKE. 35
Lord High Admiral; and Blake, being only five-feet-six,
fell below the Stuart and Savile standard of manhood;
and lost his election, not for want of learning, but for want
of stature. Napoleon Bonaparte, Nelson, and Frederic
II. would have failed in the competition for a Merton
fellowship for the same reason. And neither Blake nor
Nelson would have been found to possess the qualities
that, in the eyes of King James, fitted a man to be Lord
High Admiral of England. Had Blake succeeded in
his attempt to obtain a fellowship, how different a fate
might have awaited him As he trod that quiet path to a
quiet grave, the words of that exquisite old English song'
ascribed to Sir Edward Dyer, a friend of Sir Philip Sidney,
might have most truly described his character and his
fate:—
I feign not love where most I hate—
I wait not at the mighty's gate ;
I fear no foe, nor fawn on friend—
I loathe not life, nor dread mine end.
FIe could not indeed have filled a more obscure, at least
a more unknown, grave than he does. But the genius and
valour that made him the conqueror of the greatest
admirals of his own or any past time, and the victor in a
hundred storms and battles, would probably have for ever
slept within him, unknown even to himself.
In regard, however, to Blake's scholarship or learning,
it must be admitted to be a point about which we know
very little. What we do know is that Blake passed a
number of years at Oxford, which he would not have
| The celebrated song from which MS. copy of it, in the Bodleian Library
these lines are taken, is printed in at Oxford, the poem is ascribed to Sir
several collections of poems, published Edward Dyer, a friend of Sir Philip
in the 16th century. There are many Sidney.
variations in the various copies. In a
D 2
36 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
passed there had he not liked the place. What did he
like it for 9. He liked it for its quiet, and for his being
there able to lead the life he loved—a silent thoughtful
life, with long walks, in which he often seemed absorbed
in thought ; as in after-years, when passing some months,
before his last expedition, at Knoll, a country-house he had
near Bridgewater, in his long morning walks and musings
on Knoll Hill, he appeared to his country neighbours to be
as if working out in his own mind the details of some of
his great battles." And further as to scholarship—though,
when we consider that English literature then contained
no historical or biographical works to be compared to
those of the Greek and Roman writers, Blake would pro-
bably read with interest the narratives of Thucydides, of
Xenophon, of Plutarch, as well as of Caesar, Livy, and
Tacitus—it is very improbable that a mind like his would
either delight or excel in the composition of Latin verses,
to say nothing of Greek. A younger brother of the
Admiral, William, was also at Oxford, and furnished a
Latin epigraph to the book published by the University
on the death of Camden the antiquary, which, as Mr.
Dixon observes, Anthony Wood falsely attributes to
Robert Blake. But it is of far other stuff than that
which enables a man to shine in the composition of Greek
and Latin verses, or even in the solution of mathematical
problems, that the men are made who fight the battles
and determine, for good or evil, the fate of nations—a
Blake or a Cromwell:
A patriot hero, or despotic chief,
To form a nation's glory or its grief.
We know further of Blake—whether or not it be
' Dixon's Robert Blake, pp. 266, 267.

1651.] CROMWELL’S TASTE FOR PRACTICAL JOKES. 37
considered as in any part due to his Oxford education, to
his having learnt “ingenuas fideliter artes”—that he was
emphatieally what is comprehended in that untranslatable
English word gentleman, both in the higher and lower
significance of the term; that he was what such men as
Cromwell and Frederic II. of Prussia, never were, either
as men of sincerity and honour, or as men of thoroughly
humane demeanour. Of Frederic, Lord Macaulay has
truly said: “He had one faste which may be pardoned to
a boy, but which, when habitually and deliberately indulged
by a man of mature age and strong understanding, is al-
most invariably the sign of a bad heart—a taste for severe
practical jokes.” Now Cromwell had also this taste for
practical jokes, and for dirty practical jokes. Such jokes,
which are attended with humiliation and pain to those on
whom they are practised, evince even in small things the
mind of a tyrant. As with the Prussian tyrant, if a cour-
tier was fond of dress, oil was flung over his richest suit.
So the English tyrant, at the marriage of his daughter
Frances to Mr. Rich, the grandson and heir of the Earl
of Warwick, amused himself by throwing about the sack-
posset and wet sweetmeats among the ladies to spoil
their clothes, and daubed all the stools on which they were
to sit with wet sweetmeats. The Pruſsian tyrant had
some talent for sarcasm ; but in the war of wit against a
king, his adversary has no more chance than the wretched
gladiator, armed only with a foil of lead, against whom
Commodus descended into the arena sword in hand, and,
after shedding the blood of the helpless victim, struck
medals to commemorate his disgraceful victory. The
English tyrant, says Cowley," “was wanton and merry,
Cowley's Discourse, by way of Vision, concerning the Government of Oliver
Cromwell.
38 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
unwittily and ungracefully merry, with our sufferings; he
loved to say and do senseless and fantastical things, only to
show his power of doing or saying anything. It would
ill-befit mine, or any civil mouth, to repeat those words
which he spoke concerning the most sacred of our English
laws—the Petition of Right and Magna Charta. To-day
you should see him ranting so wildly, that nobody durst
come near him ; the morrow flinging of cushions and
playing at snowballs with his servants,” or making his
soldiers throw burning coals into one another's boots.
“These things, it may be said " (observes Lord Macaulay),
“are trifles. They are so; but they are indications, not to
be mistaken, of a nature to which the sight of human
suffering and human degradation is an agreeable excite-
ment.” If it is asked how this observation can apply to
Cromwell, who has been described as “naturally compas-
sionate towards objects in distress to an effeminate degree,”
I can only answer, that either his extraordinary success
had corrupted him, or that his nature was made up of
many and opposite elements, some good and some bad;
and that at One time of his life the good, at another the
bad, obtained the mastery.
After eight years’ residence at Oxford, Robert Blake
returned to Bridgewater, having, in consequence of his
failing to obtain a fellowship, abandoned his favourite idea.
of a college life. In the following year his father died,
leaving his property encumbered with debts. When the
debts were all paid, the family property did not exceed
£200 a year," equivalent to about £700 per annum at the
present time. Blake managed this property with prudence,
as well as liberality; for, besides devoting himself to the
' Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 20.

1651.j ADMIRAL BLAKE'S CHARACTER. 39
care of his mother, who survived her husband thirteen
years, he educated and enabled to make their way
into the world the whole of his father's numerous family.
But he showed no desire for riches; for though he left
his paternal estate unimpaired, it is said that, notwith-
standing the great sums that passed through his hands,
he did not leave £500 behind him of his own acquiring.
During those dark years of England’s history, when
Charles I. endeavoured to govern without Parliaments,
and tyranny, both civil and religious, reigned triumphant,
the years of his early manhood, from about twenty-five to
forty, Blake lived quietly on his paternal estate, with the
character of a blunt bold man, of a ready humour, and a
singularly fearless temper—straightforward, upright, and
honest in an unusual degree. His manners were marked
by a fearless bluntness and openness, accompanied with a
certain grave humour, which sometimes took the form of
bitter sarcasm against the vices of those in power. This
temper is described by Clarendon as “a melancholic and
sullen nature, a moroseness, and a freedom in inveigh-
ing against the license of the time and the power of the
Court.” “They who knew him inwardly,” adds Clarendon,
“ discovered that he had an anti-monarchical spirit, when
few men thought the Government in any danger.” But
Blake was a man of deeds, not of words; and it was pro-
bable enough that he would take the first favourable oppor-
tunity of doing all he could to destroy a form of monarchical
government that was fertile only in vices, and in the pro-
duction of such loathsome popinjays as the Somersets and
Buckinghams of the First Stuart, and such savage yet im-
becile tyrants as the Lauds and Straffords of the Second,
Accordingly, when the civil war broke out, Blake—who had
been returned as member for Bridgewater in the short
40 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
Parliament of April 1640, but was not re-elected in the Long
Parliament that met on the 3rd of November of the same
year—was one of the first in the field. Although Pepys
and other writers foolishly talk about his “passive courage”
in his famous defence of Lyme and Taunton, Blake showed
the same military qualities at the very outset of his career
that he did in his last battle, his wonderful victory of
Santa Cruz. He united, indeed, the indomitable courage
of the bulldog to the highest strategical genius. While,
as James Mill has said of Clive, “resolute and daring,
fear never turned him aside from his purposes, or deprived
him of the most collected exertion of his mind in the
greatest emergencies;” he at the same time acted from
first to last on the principle which, says a great authority
on such a point, Lord Dundonald, in one of his notes on
Blake's most celebrated actions, “I have never found to
fail—that the more impracticable a task appears, the
more easily it may be achieved, under judicious manage-
ment,” a principle judged by which “the attack on Santa
Cruz was founded on a correct estimate of the probable
result.”.” -
Mr. Dixon has, with most praiseworthy industry, given
a minute and most interesting narrative of Blake’s famous
defence of Lyme, from a M.S. account of the Siege of Lyme,
belonging to George Roberts, Esq., of that town; and
from various authentic sources, he has furnished the details
of the still more wonderful defence of Taunton. In the
course of this last defence, Blake sent an answer to a sum-
mons to surrender which is very characteristic both of his in-
vincible resolution and of his peculiar humour. After being
Mill's History of British India, * Preface to the new edition of Mr.
vol. iii. p. 376, 3rd edition, London, Hepworth Dixon's Life of Robert
1826. Blake, pp. xi., xii. London, 1858.
1651.) BLAKES DEFENCE OF LYME AND TAUNTON. 41
repeatedly defeated in their assaults, the besiegers sent to
invite the garrison to surrender to the King, rather than
die the lingering death of hunger. Blake’s answer to this
request was, that he had not yet eaten his boots, and that
he should not dream of giving up the contest while he had
so excellent a dinner to fall back upon.
In the siege of Bristol, the fort of Prior's Hill had been
entrusted by Fiennes to Blake, then only a captain. Of this
place Blake had made so resolute and obstinate a defence,
that Rupert, hearing that the commander at Prior’s Hill
refused to admit the articles of surrender—for which the
governor (Fiennes) was tried by a court-martial for cowar-
dice, and sentenced to death, though his life was spared by
Essex—threatened to hang him. In describing the subse-
quent siege of Lyme, Mr. Dixon says: “How often would the
thought occur to him (Maurice), If Rupert had only hung
that Captain Blake at Bristol In London the press was
filled with the wonders of this remarkable defence, and
Roundhead writers used it as a set-off against their own
prolonged failures at Lathom House. Yet the Cavaliers
fought before the breastworks at Lyme with the most
resolute gallantry, and some of the best blood in the West
of England flowed into those shallow trenches. After the
siege was raised, and the Royalists had time to count up
and compare their losses, they found, to their surprise and
horror, that more men of gentle blood had died under
Blake's fire at Lyme, than had fallen in all the sieges and
skirmishes in the western counties since the opening of
the war.”!
There is a story respecting the death of Blake's brother
Samuel—who of all his brothers resembled him most in
the fearlessness of his nature, and to whose son Robert,
g
Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 57, cites “Lyme MS.”
42 : COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
afterwards one of his most gallant sea-captains, the Ad-
miral bequeathed the gold-chain bestowed on him by the
Parliament —which is very characteristic both of Blake
and his time. Samuel, hearing at a small village alehouse
at Pawlett, some four miles down the river from Bridge-
water, that a captain of array and one of his followers were
crossing the river to beat up recruits for the King's service,
instead of carrying the intelligence to his brother, who was
his commanding-officer, mounted his horse and rode after
the two officers. When he came up with them a quarrel en-
sued, and he was killed. “When the news came to Bridge-
water,” says a writer who lived in Blake’s family, “the
officers of the regiment were seen to cabal together in
little companies, five or six at a place, and talk of it very
seriously—none of them being forward to tell Colonel Blake
what they were talking about. At last he asked one of
them very earnestly, and the gentleman replied, with some
emotion, “Your brother Sam is killed !’ explaining how it
came to pass. The Colonel, having heard him out, said,
‘Sam had no business there;’ and, as if he took no further
notice of it, turned from the Cornhill or marketplace into
the Swan Inn, of chief note in that town, and, shutting
himself in a room, gave way to the calls of nature and
brotherly love, saying, ‘Died Abner as a fool dieth !'”
The difference between the ultimate positions of Cromwell
and Blake—the one Lieutenant-General of the Army, Lord-
Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord-General and Commander-in-
Chief of the Army, and at last Lord Protector; the other
only Colonel, then Admiral and “General at Sea,”—must
Office-copy of Blake's Will, March and Admiral of the Fleets and Naval
13, 1655, cited in Dixon's Róbert Forces of England,” written by a
Blake, p. 52. gentleman who was bred in his family,
* “The History and Life of Robert cited in Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 51,
Blake, Esq., of Bridgewater, General London, 1852,
1651.] CROMWELL AND BLAKE. 43
not be accepted as anything like a true measure of the
difference between the abilities of the two men. Cromwell,
though not an Orator or even a passably good speaker,
was from first to last eminently a Parliamentary man—in
other words, a man of great Parliamentary influenee.
Blake had been returned for the borough of Bridgewater in
the short Parliament of April 1640, but he was not re-
elected in the Long Parliament. In 1645, however, he was
elected as one of the burgesses for Taunton, in the place
of Sir William Portman, disabled for deserting the service
of the House. On this occasion Blake took the oaths and
his seat at the same time with Ludlow. “When I came
to the House of Commons,” says Ludlow, “I met with
Colonel Robert Blake, attending to be admitted, being
chosen for Taunton; where having taken the usual oaths,
we went into the House together, which I chose to do, as-
suring myself, he having been faithful and active in the
public service abroad, that we should be as unanimous in
the carrying it on within those doors.
Blake continued to reside at Taunton, which he had so
bravely defended, and of which he had been appointed
Governor, and made no attempt to obtain Parliamentary
22 l
influence for personal advancement. The small Parliamen-
tary influence of Blake may be inferred from the fact that
when, in November 1651, after having performed great
services, he was first elected a member of the Council
of State, he had only 42 votes; while, on the same oc-
casion, Cromwell had 118, Whitelock 113, St. John 108,
Vane 104, and one “John Gurdon, Esq.” (whose name is
otherwise unknown to history), had 103. Blake had the
| Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 170 as opposed to “within those doors,”
(2nd edition, London, 1721). The word Blake at that time not having served
“abroad” only means out of the House, out of England.
44 COMMONWFALTH OF ENGIAND. [CHAP. VIII.
lowest number of votes that year of any, except Henry
Martin, who had 41. In the following year, while Blake
was not re-elected, Major-General Harrison is the last
name on the list, with only 39 votes.” Harrison would
not appear to have been, any more than Blake, popular
with the honourable Rump. They were both bold blunt
men, likely enough to rough the sleek hides of the men
of the Rump, which Cromwell knew how to smooth down
till his time came.
It is but one more version of the old story—a story
which is as true now as it was from the beginning of time,
and as it will be to the end. The career of Cromwell
is one which has been trodden times out of number,
when the highest prizes of human ambition are in troubled
times placed within the reach of genius and valour. The
career of Blake is a less common career; but it is also a
career less dazzling to the multitude, who are naturally
dazzled by the spectacle of a man raising himself to su-
preme power. Blake was a Puritan as well as Cromwell;
but I do not think that Blake could have quieted his con-
science, had he been rapacious, by quoting such texts as:
“He shall be called Mahershalal-hash-baz, because he
maketh haste to the spoil.” And Cromwell might truly be
called Mahershalal-hash-baz, if making haste to the spoil
entitled a man to that appellation. But though, in the
eyes of those who worship the powers of good and evil
alike, the genius and valour of Cromwell have cast all
other men into the shade, there are still some—and in the
course of time there will be more—able to appreciate the
genius and valour, joined to the contempt for wealth and
all the objects of vulgar ambition, of the great Admiral,
* Commons' Journals, Monday, Nov. 24, 1651.
* Ibid. Wednesday, Nov. 24, 1652.
1651.] CROMWELL AND THE STUARTS, 45
who has left to after-ages a truly heroic memory and a
stainless name.
… So far from admitting Cromwell's plea for crushing
English liberty—I mean constitutionally regulated liberty
—that he was forced to take upon himself the office of a
high-constable to preserve the peace among the several
parties in the nation, though he professed to approve the
government of a single person as little as any," it is, to all
who steadily examine the facts, a mere sophistry, or rather
a palpable untruth. The Council of State acted the part
of high-constable better than he did. The Council of
State, indeed, could not command armies as Cromwell
could, much less could it command navies as Blake com-
manded them; but Blake did not make that a reason for
setting up as a king on his own account, and throwing
England back two centuries in her progress towards good
government. When we look calmly at what the Stuarts
and Cromwell did, or attempted to do, we are forced to the
conclusion that there is less excuse to be made for Crom-
well than for the Stuarts. Any man who sets his own
or his family’s aggrandisement above truth, justice, and
honour, must be pronounced to be a man with a bad heart.
But if such a man’s brains are still worse than his heart,
there is more excuse for him than if, while his heart is bad,
his brains are good. Consequently, the plea cannot be set up
for Cromwell which may be set up for the Stuarts—that
they may be “pardoned their bad hearts for their worse
brains.” The really greatest and most formidable enemies
of mankind have been those whose fierce and rapacious
selfishness has been accompanied by ability and courage
of a high order—of an order much above the average, not
Biog. Brit., Art. “Harrington;" to his edition of Harrington's Works,
Toland's Life of Harrington, prefixed p. xix.
46 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
by the folly and pusillanimity which so emphatically
marked the Stuarts for ten generations. Harvey — the
discoverer of the circulation of the blood, of whom his
friend Hobbes says, in his book “De Corpore,” that he is the
only man, perhaps, that ever lived to see his own doctrine
established in his lifetime—was wont to say that man was
but a great mischievous baboon,' an opinion not unlikely
to be formed by a thinking man whose knowledge of man-
kind comprehended a somewhat minute acquaintance with
the Court of the Stuarts.
In the preceding volume of this History” I have shown
that the Council of State, on their appointment, directed
their first attention to the affairs of the Navy. Such atten-
tion was particularly called for, both by the importance of
the navy to the ultimate success of the cause of the Parlia-
ment, and by its condition at that time. Had the
Royalists become masters of the navy, it would not only
have been employed in maintaining a constant communi-
cation with foreign States; but the strength thence accru-
ing to the royal cause would have affected the conduct
of foreign Powers, and strengthened and excited into
activity their natural inclination to support the cause
of despotism against that of constitutional liberty. In
point of fact, if the Royalists had been masters of the navy,
the distinction between England and Hungary, or between
England and any other unhappy country which has no
physical barrier against the surrounding despots, would
have been destroyed; and the Parliamentary armies, after
defeating the forces of their native tyrants, would have
had to fight the armies of the tyrants of France, Spain,
and Germany. When Lord Macaulay says that, if a.
* Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 381. * Page 49 et seq.
1651.) IMPORTANCE OF THE NAVY. 47
French or Spanish army had invaded England, he has no
doubt that it would have been cut to pieces on the first
day on which it came face to face with the soldiers of
Preston and Dunbar, with Colonel Fight-the-good-fight
and Captain Smite-them-hip-and-thigh, he seems to forget
that though neither France, Spain, nor Germany could pro-
duce soldiers equal to those of Dunbar and Naseby, the
genius of Condé or of Turenne might have given at least
a chance to armies composed of inferior military materials.
But, be that as it may, what has been said shows the vast
importance of the navy in preventing all foreign inter-
ference in the quarrel between the English and their Kings
—an interference which might have led to most disastrous
consequences, as regarded the independence, the freedom,
and honour of England as a nation. I think there cannot
be a doubt that it was his conviction on this point that led
Blake—when the messenger reached his fleet, then lying
off Aberdeen, with the news that Cromwell had turned out
the Parliament by force, and when some of his captains
pressed him to declare against the usurper—to say, “It is
not the business of a seaman to mind State affairs, but to
hinder foreigners from fooling us.” That Blake's private
opinion was one not only of disapprobation but of disap-
pointment is certain from all that is recorded of his
opinions and his actions. Little more than a year before,
too, he is reported to have said openly, that monarchy was
a kind of government the world was weary of; that it was
past in England, going in France, and in ten years would
be gone in Spain." This prophecy of Blake is but one
* “That you may see how brave and monarchy is a kind of government the
open-dealing men your friends of the world is weary of ; that it is past in
new Commonwealth are, Blake, at his England, going in France, and that
late being at Cadiz, said openly, that it must get out of Spain with more
48 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
-E == -ka --→ * = … - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -s a H = ′ = − = = ′ = g-, -, -= -2 = , = , =– – i.
more proof, added to thousands, of the little that can be
safely predicted respecting political affairs, and of the
truth of the remark of David Hume, that the world is yet
too young to have a political philosophy. But Blake—
though, like the rest of the human race, he might miss the
mark very widely when he attempted to carry his foresight
forward for years—saw, like Cromwell and all the men of
his kind, with the unerring instinct of genius, what was
best to be done at the moment, for the hour, and for the
day that was passing over him. He thus saw that if he
declared against Cromwell, the issue of the conflict be-
tween him and Cromwell would be doubtful, while the
gain to the enemies of both would be certain. And he
saw also that if the question was of necessity between a
single tyrant like Cromwell, and a single tyrant like Stuart,
the former was infinitely to be preferred to the latter.
It is not surprising that Blake should make the mistake
he did when he said that monarchy was a kind of govern-
ment the world was weary of—-that it was gone in Eng-
land, going in France, and in ten years would be gone in
Spain. For Blake had seen events which might well make
him think that a great change had taken place in the
ideas that had prevailed in Europe for the last two centu-
ries or, at least, for the last century and a half. He
could remember the time in England when the very door-
keeper of the House of Lords dared to shut the door of
that House in the face of a Member of the House of Com-
mons, with the insolent words, “Goodman burgess, you
come not here.” He had also seen “Goodman burgess”
in a very different character. “Goodman burgess” had
gravity, but in ten years it would be Madrid, Feb. 9, 1651. (Clarendon State
determined there likewise.”—Sir Ed- Papers, vol. iii. p. 27.)
ward Hyde to Secretary Nicholas,
1651.] BLAKE OPPOSED TO THE KING'S EXECUTION. 49
formed and brought up the cuirassiers who turned the
battle on Marston Moor. “Goodman burgess” had led
the charge at Naseby. “Goodman burgess’ had stormed
and reduced to a heap of ruins many a feudal fortress
that had baffled all besiegers, and had successfully de-
fended places which were not fortresses, and where
nothing seemed defensible but his own unconquerable
will. Further, “Goodman burgess * had defeated the
fleets of many kings and of one powerful republic, and had
gone forth over the ocean, from the Pentland Frith to the
Straits of Gibraltar, conquering and to conquer. “Good-
man burgess’ had sat in that old Hall in judgment on
the captive heir of a hundred kings; and “Goodman
burgess” had done the great execution that was to be a
warning to all time. But though that execution was to be
a salutary warning to after-ages—for without the inefface-
able memory of that terrible deed, so fearlessly done in the
face of heaven and earth, assuredly James II. and some
other royal delinquents would not have been so easily got
rid of as they were—its immediate effect was not favour-
able to the cause of those who did it.
But Blake, though he was not aware of all the conse-
quences of the King's trial and execution, was not in any
degree a party to those proceedings. He wished to see the
King deposed and banished. And when he found the army
fanatics, of whom Cromwell—whether he really, at the
bottom of his heart, desired the execution of the King Or.
not, and that we can never know—was the chief leader,
determined on the King's trial and execution, he loudly
expressed his disapprobation of their proceedings.' Not
that he entertained the most remote idea of the expediency,
1 Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 111, and the authorities there cited.
VOL. II. E
50 - COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
s
-
under any circumstances, of the restoration to power of a
man who had proved himself so faithless, and so utterly
unfit to govern; but like Vane, Algernon Sydney, and
others of the more farseeing statesmen of that time, he
considered the King’s trial and execution as a grievous
political blunder. The sentimentalities of the question of
the King’s execution may be despatched in the words of
Casca, in Shakspeare's Julius Caesar: “Three or four
wenches, where I stood, cried, Alas, good soul l and forgave
him with all their hearts: if Caesar had stabbed their
mothers, they would have done no less.” -
At the commencement of the war between the King and
the Parliament, the bulk of the army, as well as of the
navy, had been Presbyterian. In the army the Presbyte-
rian element had diminished, and the Independent element
had very much increased—indeed, to such an extent, that
at the time of the King's death the army might be con-
sidered as almost entirely composed of Independents, both
as regarded the soldiers and officers; though Fairfax, the
Lord-General, was a Presbyterian, to be succeeded, how-
ever, at the beginning of the campaign in Scotland, in
1650, by Cromwell, an Independent. In the navy the
Presbyterian element remained much longer than in the
army, so that, soon after the seizure of the King's person
by the army, a disposition to mutiny showed itself in the
navy in the Downs—a disposition fomented by the Royalist
intriguers of Kent; and rose to such a height, that a por-
tion of the fleet, consisting of eleven ships, carrying
altogether 291 guns and 1,260 men, revolted from the Par-
liament, and, under the command of Vice-Admiral Batten,
sailed for the coast of Holland. On the 12th of June,
1647, the Earl of Warwick, the Lord High Admiral, had
written a letter to Batten, which shows that at that time
1651.] REVOLT OF A PART OF THE FLEET. 51
considerable doubts were entertained respecting the fleet's
fidelity to the Parliament. Batten, however, instead of (as
the Lord High Admiral's letter directed him to do) “im-
proving all means to continue the mariners in a condition
of obedience and service to the Parliament who have
intrusted them,” betrayed the trust committed to him
by the Parliament; and fomenting, instead of allaying,
the mutinous spirit in the fleet, finally, in June 1648,
informed his partisans of his resolution to declare for
King Charles, and then, with eleven ships, stood over for
the coast of Holland, to consult with the Prince of Wales.
The Prince received him with open arms, and conferred
upon him the ignominy of knighthood, which, in all cases
at the best no honour under the Stuarts, was in this case
a double disgrace, as serving to affix on the man’s name to
all time the brand of his treachery. Batten, indeed, pub-
lished in his defence a declaration, “for satisfaction of all
honest seamen and others whom it may concern,” in
which he complains of illtreatment by the Parliament.
But there is a somewhat short and simple test of the value
of this complaint of Captain Batten, furnished by his
own “Declaration : ” for among those whom he places in
the same category with himself, as having been ill-requited
by the Parliament for their great services, he specifies Colonel
Blake.” Now Batten, when he professed to be a public servant,
aggrieved and ill-requited to such an extent as to be en-
titled to revolt from those who gave him his commission,
William
* The Earl of Warwick to Captain
Batten, from the Committee, June
12, 1647, in Granville Penn's Me-
morials of Admiral Sir William Penn,
vol. i. pp. 247, 248.
* Granville Penn, vol. i. p. 268.
Mr. Granville Penn has printed in full
the “I)eclaration of Sir
Batten, late Vice-Admiral for the Par-
liament,” from a copy in the British
Museum, “printed at London in the
year 1648.”—See Memorials of Ad-
miral Sir William Penn, vol. i. pp.
266–270.
E 2
52 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
and to go over to their enemies, was in the command of a
fleet, and therefore could not have been so much ill-requited
for his former services as Blake at that time might seem
to be; for Blake had then no such command as Batten,
and Blake's defences of Lyme and Taunton were, at least,
equivalent to anything ever done by Batten. But Blake
was not one of those men who, when their own estimate
of their services is not adopted to the letter by their
Government or country, fancy that they are justified in
going over to the enemy, by way of redressing their real
or imaginary grievances. According to such a principle of
action, no Government could ever depend on its naval or
military commanders; for I believe it may be said that
there is no Government that can escape, or at least that has
yet escaped, the imputed fault of occasionally overlooking,
or at least inadequately appreciating, great services.
There is certainly, if not more excuse for, a greater tendency
in men to act as Batten acted in civil wars than on other
occasions. The revolt of those ships, however, probably
proved in the end beneficial to the Parliament; for it set
them to remodel the whole system of their navy, as they
had before done that of their army, and produced the
wonderful achievements of Blake, and an altogether new
epoch in the history of English naval affairs. -
About the time of this defection of a part of the fleet
of the Parliament, a conference was held in King Street,
Westminster, between those called, says Ludlow, “the
grandees of the House and Army, and the Commonwealth’s
men; in which the grandees, of whom Lieutenant-General
Cromwell was the head, kept themselves in the clouds, and
would not declare their judgments either for a monarchical,
aristocratical, or democratical government—maintaining
that any of these might be good in themselves, or for us,
1651.] THE COMMONWEALTH'S MEN AND MONARCHY. 53
according as Providence should direct us. The Common-
wealth’s men,” continues Ludlow, “declared that monarchy
was neither good in itself nor for us. That it was not
desirable in itself, they urged from the 8th chapter and
8th verse of the First Book of Samuel, where the rejecting
of the Judges and the choice of a King was charged upon
the Israelites, by God himself, as a rejection of Him; and
from another passage in the same Book, where Samuel de-
clares it to be great wickedness, with divers more texts of
Scripture to the same effect. And that it was no way con-
ducing to the interest of this nation, was endeavoured to
be proved by the infinite mischiefs and oppressions we had
suffered under it, and by it ; that, indeed, our ancestors had
consented to be governed by a single person, but with this
proviso, that he should govern according to the direction
of the law, which he always bound himself by oath to
perform; that the King had broken this oath, and thereby
dissolved our allegiance . . . . Notwithstanding what
was said, Lieutenant-General Cromwell, not for want of
conviction, but in hopes of making a better bargain with
another party, professed himself unresolved; and having
learned what he could of the principles and inclinations
of those present at the conference, took up a cushion and
flung it at my head, and then ran down the stairs; but I
overtook him with another, which made him hasten down
faster than he desired. The next day, passing by me in
the House, he told me he was convinced of the desirable-
ness of what was proposed, but not of the feasibleness of
it ; thereby, as I suppose, designing to encourage me to
hope that he was inclined to join with us, though unwil-
ling to publish his opinion, lest the grandees should be in-
formed of it—to whom, I presume, he professed himself to
be of another judgment.”
54 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
Some time after Cromwell began again to court the
Commonwealth party, and Ludlow says: “I took the free-
dom to tell him that he knew how to cajole and give them
good words when he had occasion to make use of them;
whereat, breaking out into a rage, he said they were a
proud sort of people, and only considerable in their own
conceits.” Some modern writers have adopted this view
of Cromwell’s respecting the Commonwealth party.
Whether they and Cromwell are right or not, let the
world judge, when the evidence necessary for a fair judg-
ment is placed before it.
So large a portion of their fleet having gone over to
their enemies some six months before the Council of State
began their work, in February 1643, they had good grounds
for making the setting forth an efficient navy the first
business to which they should direct their attention.
And in doing so they applied the same principles to the
reconstruction of their navy which the Parliament had
before applied to the reconstruction of their army. That
reconstruction of their army the Parliament had deno-
minated the “New Model,” a term which the royalist
small-wits transformed into the “New Noddle,” but soon
discovered to their cost that the joke was one of those
witticisms which are said to produce a laugh on the wrong
side of the mouth. Miracles alone, as Mr. Motley has
most ably shown in his “History of the United Nether-
lands,” had saved England from perdition in the year
1588–miracles, and not the administrative talent displayed
by the much-lauded Queen Elizabeth and her ministers.
But it is not safe to trust to miracles for the safety of a
Government or of a nation. And there is instruction in
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 238–241, 2nd edition, London, 1721.
* Motley's History of the United Netherlands, vol. ii. pp. 527, 528.
1651.] COUNCIL OF STATE AND QUEEN ELIZABETH'S COUNCIL. 55
the comparison of the Council of State of the Long Parlia-
ment with the Council of Queen Elizabeth. The Council
of State went about their work in a very different fashion
from that of Queen Elizabeth—scolding, swearing at,
and browbeating her friends, and duped by her enemies;
or of her Lord Treasurer, Burghley, “puzzled himself and
still more puzzling to others.”'. and “turning complicated
paragraphs, shaking his head, and waving his wand across
the water, as if, by such expedients, the storm about to
burst over England could be dispersed.””
It would appear that the Government of the Common-
wealth had, like that of Queen Elizabeth, found a de-
ficiency of powder. The following minutes show the want,
and their exertions to supply it:—“That it be reported to
the House that the Council upon the despatch of pro-
visions for Ireland finds a great want of powder.” The
Council recommend that the manufacture of petre (salt-
petre) be forthwith set on foot in England.” And another
minute orders, “That a letter be written to Mr. Pennoger,
to deal with the East India Company for their proportion
of saltpetre which is now come in by the East India.
fleet from those parts.”
The “New Model” was, in fact, merely the application to
the armies and fleets of a State of the same principle which
all men of common sense employ in the conduct of their
ordinary business. The year 1649 was not a time when
any Government, unless brained like the oligarchy com-
posed of Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban, would have
thought of advancing men with family interest over the
heads of men who had nothing to recommend them but
Motley's History of the United 9th July, 1649, MS. State Paper
Netherlands, vol. i. p. 88. Office.
* Ibid. vol. ii. p. 299. * Ibid. 11th September, 1649.
* Order Book of the Council of State,
56 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
their skill and courage. But the Government of which the
Council of State was the executive was brained very dif-
ferently, not only from the three worthies above mentioned,
but from the English Governments which went before and
came after them—Governments that gave the command of
armies to such men as Leicester and Buckingham, and
commissions to such men as Ensign Northerton and the
captain in Hamilton’s Bawn.
There is nothing that more strikingly shows the con-
dition of England under the Tudors than Queen Elizabeth’s
habitual treatment of her soldiers and seamen. She does
not treat them half or a quarter so well as a man of
average humanity treats his horse or his dog. “They
perish for want of victual and clothing in great numbers.”
And such was the carelessness of the much-lauded Gov-
ernment of Queen Elizabeth, that after the defeat of the
Spanish Armada, the English sailors were dying by
hundreds, and even thousands, of ship-fever, in the
latter days of August 1588. They rotted in their ships, or
died in the streets of the naval ports, because there were
no hospitals to receive them.” -
How different from the condition of the troops of the
Commonwealth was that of Queen Elizabeth's, “shoeless,
shivering, starving vagabonds” will appear from what fol-
lows. One of the first things to which the Council of State
directed the most minute attention was the quality and
quantity of the food supplied to the seamen on board their
1 Leicester to Burghley, 15th March,
1586, MS. State Paper Office, cited in
Motley's United Netherland, vol. i.
p. 448, note.
* Lord Howard to the Queen ; to
Walsingham; and to the Privy Council,
22nd August to 1st September, 1588.
MSS, State Paper Office, cited by Mot-
ley (vol. ii. p. 524).
* Motley's History of the United
Netherlands, vol. i. p. 438.-The abun-
dant evidence of the miserable condi-
tion in which Queen Elizabeth was not
ashamed to keep her troops, quoted by
Mr. Motley, furnishes a striking but
most painful picture.

1651.] RECONSTRUCTION OF THE NAVY. 57
ships. They found that the food was bad in quality, often
unfit to be eaten, and deficient in quantity. Those persons
who, like the prize-agents who keep the soldiers and
sailors’ prize-money for a series of years in order to make
fortunes by the interest of it, supplied the provisions for
the navy had no objections to starve or poison the sea-
men, provided they made fortunes by the proceeding. The
result of the indefatigable exertions of Sir Henry Vane
and his colleagues on the Committee of the Admiralty,'
aided by such an admiral as Blake—who, like his cotem-
porary Turenne to his soldiers, was a father to his seamen
—was similar to that produced some years before by the
“New Model” of the army on the food as well as the dis-
cipline of the soldiers. -
I have stated in the preceding volume” that on the
20th of February, 1643, the Council of State ordered “that
it be reported to the House as the opinion of the Council
that the ordinance of Parliament constituting the Earl of
Warwick Lord High Admiral be repealed;” that on the
same day it was resolved by the House, “that the House
doth agree with the Council of State as to the repeal of
the ordinance constituting the Earl of Warwick Lord
IIigh Admiral; ” and that, on the 26th of the same
month, the Council of State ordered, “That the names
of the Commissioners who are appointed to command at
sea shall be ranked in this order, viz.-Colonel Popham,
Colonel Blake, and Colonel Deane.” The commission “to
Colonel Edward Popham, Colonel Robert Blake, and
Colonel Richard Deane, nominated and appointed by this
* There are numerous minutes evinc- on Friday night (see Vol. I. p. 51).
ing the most anxious care of the sea- Others will be given in subsequent
men's food. Some of these have been pages of this volume. (See Chapter
already given as to the observation of XII.)
Lent, as likewise the half allowance * Vol. I. pp. 49, 50.
58 - COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
present Parliament to be Commissioners for the immediate
ordering and commanding of the fleet now at Sea, and
which shall be set forth for the year ensuing, 1649,” bears
date “February 27, 164; ;” and empowers the said Com-
missioners, or any two of them, “to hold and execute the
place of Admiral and General of the said fleet, and to give
commissions, with the seal of the anchor, unto the Vice-
Admiral and Rear-Admiral of the said fleet, the Admiral of
the Irish seas, and all other officers of the said fleet; and
further to appoint and empower any one of themselves to
command-in-chief the said fleet, or any part thereof.”
The powers of the commission are to continue to the first
day of March, 1643. The multifarious business of the
Council of State obliged them to have different seals for
their various functions. Accordingly this commission
thus ends—“And for the present, this shall be your war-
rant. Given under the Admiralty seal of this said Council
of State, this 27th day of February, 164}.
“Signed in the name and by order of the Council of
State appointed by authority of Parliament,
“DENBIGH,
“Preses pro tempore.”
On the 22nd of the same month of February, 1643, the
Council of State ordered, “That the ships at sea in the
service of the State shall bear the red cross in a white
flag;” and that the engravings upon the stern of the ships
* “That the Commission engrossed but on the 10th of March next, they
and brought in for the three Commis- made an order “that Mr. Serjeant
sioners to command the fleet at sea, be Bradshaw shall be President of this
signed by the Earl of Denbigh, as Council.”—See Vol. I. p. 38.
being Preses pro tempore.” – Order * A proclamation of Charles I., in
Book of the Council of State, 27th 1634, prohibits any but King's ships
February, 1643, MS. State Paper from carrying the Union flag in the
Office. The Council at this time ap- maintop, or elsewhere—that is, Saint
pointed a President at each meeting; George's cross and Saint Andrew's
1651.] THE COMMONWEALTH FLAG, 59
shall be the arms of England and Ireland in two es-
cutcheons, as is used in the seals.” And on the 5th of
March the Council of State ordered, “That the flag that is
to be borne by the Admiral, Vice-Admiral, Rear-Admiral,
be that now presented with the arms of England and
Ireland in two several escutcheons, in a red flag, within a
compartment : (or).” This ensign of the red flag borne
by the Admirals of the Government called the “Common-
wealth of England” was for the next seven years to be as
widely known and as victorious as the famous red flag,
which was displayed on a spear from the top of the Prae-
torium, the tent of the Roman general, as the signal to
prepare for battle. It was first displayed against an ad-
versary whose career bears a resemblance to that of Blake,
in so far as he had fought with some distinction on land
before he fought at sea. In other respects, this man dif-
fered from Blake, both in his character and his exploits, as
widely as it is possible for one human being to differ from
another.
If high birth and great bodily strength and activity
cross joined together; and orders the
English subjects to carry the red cross
commonly called Saint George's cross,
and the Scotch subjects to carry the
white cross, commonly called Saint
Andrew's cross.
1 Order Book of the Council of
State, 22nd February, 1645, MS. State
Paper Office.
* Ibid. die Lund. 5th March, et
Meridie, 1645–Mr. Granville Penn,
who in his valuable memorials of his
ancestor, Sir William Penn, gives a
few extracts from the Order Book of
the Council of State, gives the first of
the orders transcribed above, which
was for all the State ships except the
Admiral’s, Vice-Admiral's, and Rear-
Admiral's; but he does not seem to
have been aware of the existence of
the second order, which was only for
the Admiral's, Vice-Admiral's, and Rear-
Admiral's. It appears further, from
the List of the Commonwealth’s fleet
at sea in 1653 (London: printed by
M. Simmons, and sold at his house in
Aldersgate Street; and by Thomas
Jenner, at the south entrance of the
Royal Exchange, 1653; and reprinted
in Mr. Granville Penn's Memorials of
Sir William Penn, vol. i. p. 491), that
the first squadron of the fleet carried
the arms of the Commonwealth em-
broidered in gold on a red flag; the
second squadron on a white flag; the
third squadron on a blue flag.
60 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, [CHAP. VIII.
º
could make a great man, Prince Rupert would have been
a great man. But it is hardly necessary to go beyond the
periwigged face of this cavalier hero to see that he was
not a great man; for it is a face which has little or nothing
to distinguish it from those of the “round-faced peers, as
like each other as eggs to eggs, who look out from the
middle of the periwigs of Kneller.” No one can look on
the face of Cromwell—marked though it be, as Macaulay
has eloquently and truly said, “with all the blemishes
which had been put on it by time, by war, by sleepless
nights, by anxiety, perhaps by remorse”—without seeing
“valour, policy, authority, and public care written in all its
princely lines.” Yes, the lines in this man’s face—this man,
by birth but a private gentleman, by occupation a brewer—
were princely, were grand' and commanding; while those of
this son of an English princess and a German potentate
whose pedigree the heralds might, perhaps, attempt to carry
back to Charlemagne or Attila, were as commonplace as
those of any of Kneller's round-faced periwigged peers.
Even in this age of heroes, “when every year and month
brings forth a new one,” it needs something more than
cruelty and rapacity, though backed by bodily strength and
activity, to make a hero of whom “one would care to vaunt.”
And in that troubled time there was no room for heraldic
heroes and heraldic princes, however long and fine might be
their hair, their pedigrees, or their periwigs. Necessity
at such times is sure to find out the men who are princely
by nature, whether or not they are so by birth: and then,
when the hollow image -
Is found a hollow image and no more,
The power returns into the mighty hands
Of Nature, of the spirit giant-born.
* Sir William Napier repeatedly expresses himself as much struck with the
“grand face,” as he calls it, of Soult, the greatest of Napoleon's Marshals.
1651.] - PRINCE RUPERT. 61
By one of those strange caprices of fortune by which
retribution is so often escaped upon earth, this German
adventurer had always escaped from those fields of battle
on which the vengeance of an outraged nation had taught
the Stuart tyrant, and his French wife, and his German
nephews, that Englishmen were not to be oppressed with
impunity, like French and German serfs. Long before he
fled from Naseby, with Cromwell's horse-hoofs thundering
close behind him, Rupert had endeavoured to secure some
part of the plunder (which, and the power of plundering
the English people for ever after, was all he fought for)
by freighting one or two vessels with it. But these
ships fell into the hands of the Parliament. After the fall
of Bristol—which Rupert, after a defence forming a strong
contrast to Blake's defence of Lyme and Taunton, surren-
dered to the army of the Parliament—the King signified
his pleasure to the Lords of the Council, that they should
require Prince Rupert to deliver his commission into their
hands. He likewise wrote a letter to Rupert, dated
“Hereford, September, 1645,” in which he says: “I must
remember you of your letter of the 12th of August,
whereby you assured me that, if no mutiny happened,
you would keep Bristol for four months. Did you keep it
four days? Was there anything like a mutiny? More
questions might be asked; but now, I confess, to little
purpose: my conclusion is, to desire you to seek your sub-
sistence, until it shall please God to determine of my
condition, somewhere beyond the seas—to which end I
send you herewith a pass.” Rupert went first to Holland,
then to France, where, in July 1646, he was made Maré-
chal-du-camp, and had a regiment of foot, a troop of
horse, and the command of all the English in France."
| Rupert MS. in Warburton, iii. 237. translated Field-Marshal. But Field-
Maréchal-du-camp has sometimes been Marshal is a much higher rank, though
62 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
It is probable that Rupert's arrogance made him as dis-
agreeable to his own party as his cruelty and rapacity
rendered him hateful to his enemies. Clarendon says
he had the misfortune “to be no better beloved by the
Ring’s party than he was by the Parliament.” As he had
before fled from Cromwell, he was now to have to fly before
another Parliamentary officer, as terrible by sea as Crom-
well was by land. For when the seamen of that part of
the fleet which had revolted from the Parliament mutinied
against Batten, who had brought them over to Prince
Charles, Rupert obtained the command, though some of
the chief seamen refused to “sail under Rupert, a foreign
prince.” And the same cotemporary document (“From
the Hague, 2nd November, 1648 °) adds:–“The seamen
desert daily; the chief that stay are very debauched,
which produces duels every day.” It is evident that ships
manned by such seamen would be fit enough to become
pirates; and pirates they became. It is also remarkable
that, though we hear enough of their depredations upon
merchant-ships, not sufficiently armed to offer any effective
resistance, we do not hear of a single instance of their attack-
ing any ship of war—at least any ship of such strength as to
make anything like a good and equal fight. This is, indeed,
the nature of pirates and robbers generally, who, though
they may, when forced to it, fight as men fight with the hal-
ter about their necks, have really little or nothing at all of
that high and adventurous courage which has been falsely
ascribed to them by those modern writers, who have done
their utmost to corrupt public morals, by making, or at
when Turenne, in his twenty-third year, lent to the German term Field-Mar.
obtained the appointment of Maréchal- shal, is Marshal of France.
du-camp, that appointment was then * Proceedings in Parliament, &c.
the next in rank to that of Maréchal- Granville Penn, vol. i. p. 277.
de-France. The French term, equiva-
1651.) CRUELTY AND RAPACITY OF PRINCE RUPERT. 63
least attempting to make, heroes of tyrants, robbers, and
villains of every description, Small and great.
Though there may be very much doubt about the hero-
ism of this German adventurer, there is very little about
his rapacity and cruelty. The cotemporary narratives of
the events of this English Civil War abound with instances
of the outrages perpetrated by him, upon the perSons,
property, and dwellings of the English people. Admiral
Penn, in his Journal, relates several cases that place
his tyrannous and cruel nature in a strong light. He
says, under date 24th July 1651, that there came on
board one of his ships, “to serve the State, four of
Rupert’s men (but pressed by him since the revolt), who
ventured their lives in attempting their escape from him
at Toulon.” And the Admiral tells a story of Rupert's
cruelty, so atrocious, that, as Mr. Granville Penn remarks
in a note, it is to be wished that Rupert’s reputation were
such as to give the lie to this dreadful statement, which I
would not venture to give in any words but Admiral Penn’s
own : “30th October, 1651.-About noon Captain Jordan
came aboard, and informed me of a Genoese he stopped
two nights since, who came from the island Terceira. . . . .
The lieutenant of the said ship, who was brother to the
slain captain * [killed by a shot from Captain Jordan’s
ship], “with others of the ship's company, gave us intelli-
gence of Rupert’s being, about six weeks since, at Terceira;
and how cruelly he murdered the gunner of this ship,
being an Englishman, and refusing to serve him. He
commanded him from the town of Terceira aboard the
Reformation, wherein he is Admiral; and, having him
aboard, commanded his ears to be cut off; which being
done, he caused his arms to be bound together, and flung
Admiral Penn's Journal, July 24, 1651, in Granville Penn, vol. i. p. 353.
64 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
Rºs, --> w-. He -------------, - - - - - - -=x------ - - - ---- - - -
him overboard into the sea, where the poor creature
perished. The Lord forgive this bloody wretch, and con-
vert him, if he belongeth unto him; otherwise, if His
Holiness please, suddenly destroy him l’” So prays the
Admiral, a prayerful man even for that time. If Rupert
had ventured his person in Drogheda or Wexford, or if
Blake had ever fairly fallen in with him, his life would not
have been worth much. But his powers of escaping pur-
suit, both by land and sea, appear to have been very
extraordinary. At this very time Penn was cruising in
search of him, after he had escaped from Blake, who had
captured or destroyed all his pirate squadron—the whole
of the revolted fleet, with the exception of the Reforma-
tion and the Swallow, the two ships in which Rupert and
his brother Maurice sailed, and the Marmaduke, a ship
they had recently taken. Clarendon mentions, as a proof
of Rupert’s bodily strength, as well as “notable vigour,”
that in one of the mutinies which he suppressed, “he had
been compelled to throw two or three seamen overboard
by the strength of his own arm.”
During the whole of the year 1649, Rupert, with his
fleet of revolted ships, carried on a war of piracy against
the merchant-ships of all nations. The Dutch suffered
from his depredations no less than the English. Accord-
ing to the RupertMSS. (published by Mr. Elliot Warburton)
the Court of the exiled Prince Charles subsisted on these
robberies. This, however, is denied by Clarendon, who,
though neither his nor Rupert's testimony can be accepted
as very conclusive, is at least as trustworthy a witness as
Rupert, and who says: “Sure when it is known that Prince
Rupert, instead of ever giving to the King one penny
of those millions which he had taken, demanded a great
'Admiral Penn's Journal, 30th Oct., 1651, in Granville Penn, vol. i. p. 380.
1649.] RUPERT ESCAPES FROM KINSALE HARBOUR. 65
debt from the King; that he received £14,000 since his
being in France, and took no more notice of it to the King
then if he were not concerned; and that he went away
discontented, because the King would not approve of all
he did, or desired to do, it cannot be wondered that the
”! But whether he
gave one penny to the King or not, it is certain he took
King did not importune him to stay.
many pennies from the English, who had then a Govern-
ment which at least had this virtue—that it was one which
would not suffer its subjects to be robbed or maltreated in
any way by any but itself. There are many minutes in the
“Order Book of the Council of State,” during the year 1649,
relating to the depredations committed by Prince Rupert
on English ships. The town and castle of Kinsale being
in the hands of the Irish rebels, Rupert found the harbour
of Kinsale a convenient place for refuge, as well as for dis-
posing of some of his prizes; though the greater part were
probably sold in French, Dutch, and other continental ports.”
But Blake, with his division of the Parliamentary fleet,
shut up the pirate and his fleet in Kinsale Harbour, and
established a strict blockade; while Cromwell, by his
storm of Drogheda and Wexford, showed that Ireland
was not, at that particular time, a very safe abode for any
whom the Parliament of England designated pirates or
rebels. -
Under these circumstances, towards the end of October,
Rupert, with his usual good fortune in running away from
formidable enemies, contrived to make his escape, with a
* Clarendon State Papers, 26th June,
1654.
* “That a letter be written to Sir
George Ayscue, now in the Downs, to
inclose unto him the case stated by
Dr. Walker (of the Admiralty Court)
WOL. II.
of the injuries offered unto the English
nation by the French, in suffering
prizes to be brought into and sold in
Dunquerque.”—Order Book of the
Council of State, 29th September,
1649, MS. State Paper Office.
F
66 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
considerable part of his pirate fleet; Blake—as the winter
and the strong north-east winds set in, and as it was an
extremely dangerous lee-shore, and entirely without safe
anchorage—being forced to ride out at a greater distance
from the mouth of the harbour."
It appears from an original letter” (which has never been
printed) among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian, from
Blake to Cromwell, that in the beginning of November,
Blake was in Cork Haven. This letter is dated “Cork
5, 1649,” and thus commences:
“Right Honourable,_By God’s good providence on Satur-
Haven, November
day last, in the morning, we came safe into Cork Haven,
notwithstanding we were shot at divers times from a fort,
at the entering of the harbour, held by the Irish.” The
writer then goes on to state that he finds, by the expressions
of several officers, “now aboard with me, and by the rela-
tion of two other officers who were yesterday in Cork,”
that there is a great deal of cordial and unanimous resolu-
tion among them, with a firm and sincere affection, as far
as I can judge, to the English interest and army.” It
* Even in the preceding June, as
appears from a letter to the Speaker
of the House of Commons, “From
aboard the Triumph in Milford Haven,
June 18, 1648,” and signed “Robert
Blake, Ric. Deane,” the weather had
driven the blockading fleet to take re-
fuge in Milford Haven. “We have
now,” the letter says, “been 13 days
absent from Kinsale, from whence we
were forced by extremity of weather,
and driven hither where we now are
with 8 ships. We shall, God willing,
with the first opportunity, endeavour
to get to Kinsale Bay again, and pur-
sue our former resolution, if we shall
find them there, or otherwise follow
them whithersoever they shall go.”—
See the letter in Dixon's Robert Blake,
new edition, pp. 104, 105, London,
1858. --
* I am indebted for a copy of this
letter to the kindness of Mr. F. K.
Lenthall, Recorder of Woodstock, a
lineal descendant of the Speaker of the
Long Parliament. Mr. Lenthall him-
self copied the letter from the original
in the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian.
I am also indebted to the same gentle-
man for a most graphic account of
Cromwell's dissolution of his last Par-
liament, which he also copied from an
original letter among the Tanner MSS.
1649.] LETTER OF BLAKE TO CROMWELL, 67
would be extremely interesting, as well as important, to
know Blake’s real opinion of Cromwell, about three years
or a little more after this point of time, though such
Opinion could hardly be expected to be found in a letter
from Blake to Cromwell himself. But when we consider
what an unusually frank, fearless, and plainspoken man
Blake was, and that, in an official letter to his Commander-
in-Chief, he was under no necessity to pay him compliments,
it may, I think, be fairly inferred, from the following
sentences in this letter, that at this time Blake placed full
and hearty confidence both in Cromwell’s ability and his
fidelity to the Parliament. “I look upon it,” the letter
continues, “as an extraordinary and very seasonable mercy
of God, in stirring up and uniting so many resolute spirits
to a work of so great consequence, and which, by God’s
further blessing and your management, may be a means of
reducing, in a short time, the greatest part of Munster.
The gentlemen that were chief actors in this business had
penned certain propositions, to be tendered to your Excel-
lency, in behalf of themselves and others; but they are
willing to decline that way, and to put themselves upon .
your goodness, of which I have made bold to assure them
that they shall receive more satisfaction than if they
should insist upon any conditions, they professing them-
selves all resolved to live and die in defence of the Parlia-
ment and army of England, under your command.
To-morrow, God willing, Iintend to go to Cork, to do my best
to confirm (if need be) the resolutions of the soldiers and
townsmen, they being now upon their duty, and expecting
every day some relief from your Excellency. I purpose
to stay here till then, and till some other ships of fire'
come hither, and then I wait on your Excellency. In the
* Fire-ships.
F 2
68 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
meantime, having nothing to add but my hearty prayers
unto God for you and your army and undertakings, I
remain, your Excellency’s most affectionate and humble
servant, -
RoBERT BLAKE.”
On the 20th of November, 1649, Kinsale surrendered to
Blake.” -
Rupert directed his course southward, and his move-
ments appear now to have attracted more of the attention
of the Council of State than they did before. On the 1st
of December 1649, the day following that on which
the Council received Blake’s letters concerning the sur-
render of Kinsale, they directed a letter to be written to
Colonel Popham, the like to Colonel Blake and Colonel
Deane, “to inclose unto them the informations which are .
sent hither concerning the spoils which are made by Prince
Rupert about the Straits [of Gibraltar], and to desire them
to hold a serious consultation thereupon, and to consider
in what way some prevention may be given unto him, and
to return their opinions therein to the Council.” ” On the
3rd of December, the Council of State directed “a letter
to be written to the Generals at sea, to give them the state
of the winter fleet, and to desire them to think of taking
a squadron out of the winter guard to go to seek out
Rupert’s fleet; and, in such ships as shall need it, to desire
them to increase their number of men, not exceeding the
proportion of the winter guard.” “
* This letter is endorsed in Crom- ported to the House; and Sir Henry
well's hand, “Coll. Blacke's letter to ” Vane is desired to make this report.”—
“me” erased and substituted) “the Order Book of the Council of State,
Ld.-Lnt. of Ireland.” 30th November, 1649, MS. State Paper
* “That the letter from Colonel Office. -
Blake of the 20th November, concern- * Ibid. 1st December, 1649.
ing the rendition of Kingsale, be re- * Ibid. 3rd December, 1649.
1649.] BLAKE SENT IN PURSUIT OF RUPERT. 69
On the following day, the 4th of December 1649, the
Council of State made an order, “That Colonel Blake
shall be the person who shall be appointed to command
the squadron which is to go towards Cales [Cadiz) to seek
out Prince Rupert.”" And on the same day they ordered,
“That a letter be written to Colonel Blake, to let him
know that this Council hath pitched upon him as the
person whom they intend to send against Prince Rupert;
to let him know that he is to reside at Plymouth until all
things shall be ready for his setting forth ; and in the
meantime the Irish squadron may do service in the station
to which they are appointed.” On the same day they
ordered a letter to be written to Colonel Popham, to let
him know that they had pitched upon Colonel Blake to
command the squadron which is to go against Prince
Rupert; and in this letter, as well as in that to Blake,
they say, “which the Council hath done to prevent the
delays which may be occasioned by appointing a
consultation.” In this letter to Popham they also say,
“That this Council leaves it to him and the rest of the
Generals at sea, to appoint such number of ships, and of
such quality as they shall think fit, to go forth in the
squadron; that the Committee of the Admiralty will take
care for the providing of all supplies which may be neces-
sary for the expedition, and will likewise advise with such
as are traders to the Straits for their judgment in the
business.” ”
On the same day the Council made an order, “That it
be referred to the Committee of the Admiralty, to advise
with some merchants, traders to the Straits, to know of
1 Order Book of the Council of State, 2 Ibid.
4th December, 1649, MS. State Paper 8 Ibád.
Office.
70 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
-*
them their opinions concerning the sending of a fleet
against Prince Rupert, now about the Straits, who are to
report to the Council what they shall receive from the said
merchants concerning this affair.” " -
On the 8th of December the Council of State made the
following orders: “That £14,000 be lent to the Committee
of the Navy out of the money laid aside for the use of the
emergent affairs of this Commonwealth, to be made use of
by them for the setting out of the squadron which is to go
against Prince Rupert.” “That some part of the summer
fleet may be sent as a reserve after this squadron that is
now to go out.””
The Council of State were, as I have before observed,
manifestly anxious for peace with foreign States, though
when attacked or insulted they showed themselves not
unprepared for war. On the 13th of December they
determined that two persons should be sent into Spain
(one as agent, the other as counsel or consul), “to keep
a good correspondence between the two nations.” "
On the 31st of December, 1649, the Council ordered a
letter to be written to the Committee of the Navy, to
acquaint them with the former vote (appointing Blake
Admiral of the fleet against Rupert), and to enclose unto
them the vote of the Council,
whereby Captain Moulton is
* Order Book of the Council of
State, 4th December, 1649, MS.
State Paper Office.—On the 28th of
December, 1649, a petition was pre-
sented to the Council of State from the
Company trading into Turkey, repre-
senting the great losses they have sus-
tained by piracies, and craving redress
therein. (Ibid. 28th December, 1649.)
On the same day (the 28th December,
1649), there is a warrant to Mr. Wil-
loughby to transport into foreign parts
forty couple of English hounds. On
the 5th of February, 16#, there is an
order of the Council of State, “That
the Lord Ambassador of Spain shall
have liberty to ship 20 horses, of which
12are coach and therest saddle horses.”
* Ibid. 8th December, 1649.
* Ibid. 13th December, 1649.
1649.] INCREASE OF THE NAVY. 71
made Vice-Admiral to the fleet now to go to the south,
and likewise to enclose unto them the opinion of the
Masters of the Trinity House concerning the sending of
the fleet to the South.” " -
On the 5th of January, 1643, the Council of State
sent formal notice to the Spanish Ambassador “yet re-
maining in England,” that “because they find that the
trade between the two nations is like to be very much
disturbed by the means of the revolted ships commanded
by Prince Rupert, who, with others their adherents, have
betaken themselves to piracy, they [the Council of State]
have thought fit to appoint a considerable fleet to go into
those seas in pursuit of the said revolters and pirates, who
they hear are now at Lisbon, but do presume will have no
maintenance nor protection from any that are allies to
this State.” ” -
On the 7th of January, 16##, the Council of State
made the following important minute relating to the in-
crease of the navy: “That it be reported to the Parlia-
ment that the Council is of opinion that it is necessary
that some more ships should be built for the service and
safety of the Commonwealth, and that it may at this time
be more conveniently done in regard of the great stores of
timber that is now cut down.” There are three orders of
the following day, the 8th of January, which, though not
relating to naval affairs, I venture to transcribe: “That
fl00 be paid to Mr. Thomas Waring, for a book contain-
ing several examinations of the bloody massacry (sic) in
Ireland.” “That Mr. Milton do confer with some printers
1 Order Book of the Council of State for Sir Oliver Fleming, Knt., to
State, 31st December, 1649, MS. State the Spanish Ambassador yet remain-
Paper Office. ing in England.”—Ibid. 5th January,
* “Instructions from the Council of 16#.
72 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
or stationers, concerning the speedy printing of this book.”
“That Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the
Book of Salmatius (sic), and when he hath done it, bring
it to the Council.” " -
The following order of the 12th of January, 16#,
confirms what has been said in the preceding volume re-
specting the pressing of seamen: “That it be referred to
the Committee of the Admiralty to give order for the
victualling of the ships that are to go southward, for six
months from the 20th of January instant; that they also
give orders to the Commissioners of the Navy to press 150
men, and send them down to Portsmouth for the service of
the fleet now going south.” On the same day they ordered,
“That it be referred to the Committee of the Ordnance to
contract with Mr. Browne, the gunfounder, for ordnance for
the winter fleet of the next year.
On the 16th of January, the Council of State ordered a
letter to be written to the Committee of the Navy, “That
in regard Colonel Blake is to go General of the fleet that
is to go to the southward, to desire them that order be
25 2
presently given for the pay of his last year's salary, that he
may be thereby the better fitted for this service.” On the
same day they also ordered “an instruction to be prepared
for Colonel Blake, to send for the merchants of this nation
who are in such places abroad as he shall have occasion to
apply himself unto with his fleet, and to tender unto them
the engagement; and to let them know that as this State
gives protection unto them in their trade, so this State
expects that they should be faithful unto them, and that
they should not own or apply themselves unto any persons
* Order Book of the Council of State, 7th and 8th January, 16#, MS.
State Paper Office. * Ibid. 12th January, 16#.

1649.] INSTRUCTIONS TO BLAKE. 73
whomsoever who come as ambassadors from Charles
Stuart, and have no character from this State.” "
On the 17th of January, 16##, the Council of State
sent Blake his instructions. “You shall,” say the instruc-
tions, “if you find yourself strong enough, not spare the
revolters, but fight with them, and by God’s assistance
prosecute their destruction; and in case any foreign ships
shall thereupon assist the said revolters, or fight against
you, you likewise shall fight against them, and destroy or
surprise them as God shall enable you; but so that after
the fight ended, in case you happen to take any foreigners,
there be not made any slaughter of them in cold blood,
but that they be kept and used civilly as prisoners of war.
And in case that you find occasion, by reason of any un-
expected assistance given to the said revolters, or any
power of ships set forth by any for the surprising of our
merchant-ships or prejudicing of this Commonwealth, that
then and in such case you shall be and are hereby enabled,
according as the Lords Admirals of England in such cases
formerly were, to call unto your assistance, and embargo,
arrest, and make use of any English merchants” ships to
join with you, to fight or make defence for the safeguard
and benefit of this Commonwealth. And they are hereby
enjoined to yield obedience. Furthermore, if the said
1 Order Book of the Council of
State, 16th January, 16#, MS. State
Paper Office. -
* As I have before shown, the mer-
chant-ships were, at that time, all
more or less armed. See note at p. 107
of the preceding volume, where it is
shown that even colliers' ships of 160
tons carried as many as eight guns.
Consequently, merchant-ships were
easily made available as ships of war,
and were frequently bought for the use
of the State, of which the following
minute furnishes an example: “That
the opinion brought in from the Com-
mittee of the Admiralty, concerning
the buying of the merchant frigate
for the use of the State, at the rate
of £2750, be approved of.”—Ibid.
9th January, 16#.
74 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
revolted fleet, or any of them, should happen to be sold by
their Commander-in-Chief, or any of their captains, or other
persons whatsoever, to any foreign Prince or State, or any
of their subjects, or stayed there under any colour or pre-
tence, you are not for all that to forbear to seize, burn,
destroy, or surprise them wheresoever you can do it; and
to signify to them that these ships are part of the navy
of England, and the Parliament’s own ships, and were
treacherously carried away by those perfidious revolters,
who have no property in them nor power to sell them; and
that your commission from the Parliament enjoins you to
demand them wherever they be, and to seize upon them
and send them home. And whereas the dominion of these
seas hath anciently and time out of mind undoubtedly
belonged to this nation, and the ships of all other nations,
in acknowledgment to that dominion, have used to take
down their flags upon sight of the Admiral of England, and
not to bear it in his presence, you are—as much as in you
lieth, and as you find yourself and the fleet of strength
and ability—to do your endeavour to preserve the said
dominion of the Sea, and to cause the ships of all other
nations to strike their flags and not to bear them up in
your presence; and to compel such as are refractory therein,
by seizing their ships, and sending them in to be punished
according to the law of the sea, unless they submit and
yield such obedience as you shall approve of: yet we would
not that you should, in this expedition, engage the fleet in
any peril or hazard for that particular. There are special
letters of credence delivered to you, to make use of as you
may have occasion.” For the use of the fleet there were
provided £3,000 in Spanish money—pieces of eight, bought
at 4s. 10d. per piece, and £1,000 in English money. There
1649.] INSTRUCTIONS TO ASCHAM, &c. 75
were also letters of credit in Spain, Italy, &c., to the
amount of £10,000."
On the 23rd of January, the Council of State gave “In-
structions for Anthony Ascham, Esq., Agent from the Com-
monwealth of England to the King of Spain,” by which
Ascham is directed “to signify to the King of Spain that
the Parliament of England hath received information that
there are arrived at the Court of Spain the Lord Cotting-
ton and Mr. Edward Hyde, calling themselves ambassadors
from the late King’s eldest son, pretending himself King
of Great Britain, who have presumed to write to the mer-
chants of the Commonwealth residing in Spain, requiring
them to acknowledge them, the said Cottington and Hyde,
as public ministers of the said Pretender.” Ascham is, by
his instructions, further directed “to desire the said King
of Spain, that if any ships or goods belonging to the people
of this Commonwealth shall be brought into any of the
ports, by Rupert or any other pirate, that they may be put
in safe custody, and without breaking bulk be delivered to
the owners thereof.””
On the same day instructions, to the same purport, were
given to Charles Vane, Esq., “Agent from the Common-
wealth of England to the King of Portugal.””
On the 24th of January, a letter was ordered to be written
to Colonel Popham and Colonel Blake, “to give them what
information the Council hath received of the preparation
of frigates by the enemies in Dunkirk for the infesting
of the seas”; and Colonel Popham is therefore desired to
have an eye to those seas, “when that squadron is gone
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. 23rd January, 16#.
State, 17th January, 16#, MS. State * Ibid. same day.
Paper Office.
76 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
southward which is now to go forth with Colonel Blake.” "
On the following day, the 25th, an order is made, “That
the General of the fleet (Blake) shall land Mr. Ascham in
such port of Spain as shall be thought most convenient for
his journey to Madrid.”* Next day (26th of January), it is
ordered “ that a messenger be sent down to Gravesend, to
hasten away the ships that are to go to the southward.” "
It would appear, however, that Blake's fleet had not sailed
by the 8th of February; for on that day Blake is directed
to give Mr. Ascham accommodation suitable to his quality,
and, in case he shall not be received as ambassador, to re-
ceive him on board again.”
On Saturday, the 16th of February, 16##, an order
was made, “That all whose names are in the new Act for a
Council of State for the year to come be desired to be here
on Monday in the afternoon, for the putting in execution
of the powers given them by the new Act ; and that all
orders concerning Standing Committees formerly made be
written out, with the persons that are of those committees.”
Of these Standing Committees, the principal were—
“Admiralty,
“Ordnance,
“Ireland,
| Order Book of the Council of
State, 24th January, 16#, MS. State
Paper Office.
Ibid. 25th January, 16#.
* Ibid. 26th January, 16##.
* Ibid. 8th February, 16#.—It would
seem from the following order that
some members of the Council of State
were not members of the Parliament:
“That notice be given to all the mem-
bers of this Council who are not of the
Parliament, that the corpse of the late
Earl of Pembroke is to be carried out of
town on Wednesday next, to the end
that they may accompany it two or three
miles onwards the way, the Parliament
having ordered that all their members
do accompany the corpse out of town.”
—Ibid. 4th February, 1643. On the
same day the Council made an order,
“That a coach with seven horses shall
be bought for the service of the State,
for the receiving of Agents from
abroad, and likewise liveries for six
footmen, and a coachman and a posti-
lion, &c.”—Ibid.
1649.] ORDERS FOR REGULATING COUNCILS PROCEEDINGS. 77
“Private Examinations,
“Foreign Negotiations.” "
On Monday the 18th of February, 16#3, the Council
reappointed Mr. Serjeant Bradshaw President of the Coun-
cil, with the like provisions as in the preceding year.”
They then voted the reappointment of Mr. Milton, Mr.
Frost [father and son], and all the clerks employed the
preceding year, at the same salaries.”
On the 23rd of February, the minutes contain the
following rather important construction of the Council’s
oath of secrecy: “That any of the Council shall have
liberty to reveal whatsoever is debated, resolved, or spoken
of, if they be not forbidden to reveal by the major part of
those present at the said debates, resolutions, and
speeches.” “
On the 27th of February the Council of State proceeded
to make “Orders for regulating the Proceedings of the
Council; ” some of which I will transcribe, that the reader
may be better enabled to form an opinion of the character
given them by Bishop Warburton—“a set of the greatest
geniuses for government the world ever saw embarked
together in one common cause ’’:—
“That after the reading of the letters” [which included
the letters received that morning or since the last meeting
of the Council, and those ordered at the last meeting to be
* Order Book of the Council of
State, die Saturni, 16th February,
16#, MS. State Paper Office. On
the 1st of February, the Council
the rising of the Council.” “Lamps
to be set up in the galleries about
Whitehall for making the passage con-
venient for the members of the
made an order, “That Mr. Serjeant
do speak unto Colonel Goffe for the
furnishing of 20 men every afternoon,
well and full armed, to be placed in
the chamber commonly called the
Guard Chamber, there to attend until
Council.”—Ibid. 1st February, 16#.
* Vol. i. p. 38.
* Order Book of the Council of State,
die Lunae, 18th February, 1643, MS.
State Paper Office.
“Ibid. 23rd February 16#.
78 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
written by the secretaries], “ if there be nothing of present
danger that must be instantly despatched, then all the Com-
mittees of the Council that have any business stand
referred to them shall make their report thereof to the
Council.”
“That the letters sent to the Council be opened at the
place of the Council’s sitting, in the presence of three at
the least of the Council, and then be delivered to the
Secretary.” -
“That if letters shall arrive when the Council is not
sitting that are known or supposed to be of importance,
and to require a more speedy despatch than to attend the
ordinary meeting of the Council, the President and any
two of the Council shall have power to open them, and, if
necessary, to give order for the present summoning of the
Council, to take it into consideration and make a despatch.”
“That whatever is propounded, seconded, and thirded,
be put to the question, if none of the members of the
Council speak against it.”
“That when a business is resolved by the question, the
Secretary shall enter the said votes into the books, and
nothing of any debate or argument shall be entered, but only
the results thereof declared in the said votes.”
“That when there shall be but nine members of the
Council, none of them shall depart the Council Chamber
without leave, during the time appointed for sitting of the
Council.”
Although at other times the Council, as has been stated
in the preceding volume, had morning sittings (namely,
at 7 or sometimes 8 in the morning), as well as
afternoon sittings, at this time the order was, “That the
Council shall sit every day, except Lord’s-days” [as we shall
* Order Book of the Council of State, 27th Feb. 16#, MS. State Paper Office.
1649.] COMMITTEE OF THE NAVY. 79
see they sat on Lord’s-days when the business was urgent,
as during the march of the Scots into England before the
Battle of Worcester, and during the Dutch war], “at 3
in the afternoon, and shall not sit after 6 when the House
sits, unless for business that cannot bear delay till next
day.” "
On the 2nd of March the Council of State made the
following orders:—
“That the paper now sent from the Parliament, contain-
sing the increase of wages to the seamen, be sent to the
Committee of the Navy.”
“That the Council doth declare that in the framing of
the new Militia they will have no such officer as a Lieute-
nant-Colonel of Horse; and that commissions granted to
any to be Lieutenant-Colonels of Horse be revoked, and
commissions for Majors given in lieu of them.”
“That the whole Council, or any five of them, be
appointed a Committee for Trade and Plantations.”
“That Sir Henry Vane, Colonel Wauton, Mr. Challoner,”
Colonel Popham, Colonel Stapeley, Colonel Purefoy, Earl of
Salisbury, Mr. Luke Robinson, or any three of them, be
appointed a Committee to carry on the affairs of the
Admiralty and Navy, and to exercise the same powers as
they have formerly done.” "
The following minute of the 25th of March 1650 shows
the stringency of their press warrants: “Whereas the
Council of State hath contracted with Mr. Pitt, gunfounder,
* Order Book of the Council of State, Esq.) Aubrey says: “He was as far
27th February, 16#, MS. State Paper from a Puritan as the east from the
Office.—On the same day the follow- west. He was of the natural religion,
ing order was made: “That when any and of Henry Martyn's gang, and one
Members of Parliament shall come to who loved to enjoy the pleasures of
the Council, there shall be chairs set this life.”—Aubrey's Letters and Lives,
for them, and they shall be desired to (2 vols. London, 1813), vol. ii. p. 282.
sitdown.” * Order Book of the Council of State,
* Of Chaloner (Thomas Chaloner, 2nd March 16#, MS. State Paper Office.
5 02
80 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. VIII.
*
=
for new casting of some ordnance for the service of the
State, in which he is to make use of Edward Lane, these
whom it may concern.
are therefore to will and require you not to press the said
manifest themselves.
addressed “to all Constables, Pressmasters, and all others
22 l
Edward Lane, servant to Mr. Pitt, for any other service of
the State during his employment in the said service of the
Commonwealth, Given 25 Martii 1650.”
By this time symptoms of
The warrant is
the Dutch quarrel began to
A Dutch man-of-war having refused
to be searched, the Council of State ordered that efficient
assistance be given to the searchers to do their office.”
By this time also the Council began to be fully aware that
they would have to encounter more enemies than the
Dutch and the German pirate Rupert. In their instruc-
tions of the 30th of March 1650, “for Richard Bradshaw,
5
Esq., Resident from the Commonwealth of England
with the Senate of Hamburg,” they direct him to
Poland, Sweden, and Denmark; ”
inform himself, and give them notice, “what designs are
on foot and what transactions are made in Germany,
and in regard to the
Senate of Hamburg their instructions run thus -—“You
shall demand of them, in the name of the Commonwealth
1 Order Book of the Council of State,
Office.
of England, that justice may be done upon those offenders
of the company of English merchants resident there; and
25th March, 1650, MS. State Paper
that assaulted and attempted to assassinate the minister
also upon those pirates who took away the deputy of that
2 Ibid. 28th March 1650.-The fol-
pany shall come to this town which
care that, as soon as the ship's com-
to their trade by the Dutch, they put
the thing into a way of proof and at-
lowing minute has reference also to the testation in the Admiralty, to the end .
trading to the East Indies do take to the States.”—Ibid. 6th May, 1650.
brings the tidings of the injury offered
same subject: “That the Company that complaint may be made thereof
1650.] ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS TO BLAKE. 81
company and some other merchants—against whom there
hath been no proceeding for those crimes.” On the 22nd
of March they ordered a letter to be written to Mr. Strick-
land, to inform himself what English, especially persons
of quality, are with the Scots’ king at Breda.”
On the 12th of April the Council made an order, “That
Colonel Popham be desired to go forthwith to Portugal,
with a fleet to consist of eight ships.” ” On the 20th of
April the Council despatched “additional instructions to
Colonel Robert Blake, appointed General of the first fleet
that is gone to the southward.” In these “additional
instructions,” the Council state their case with a force
and clearness which form such a remarkable contrast with
some of the other writings of him who drew them (for I
believe them to have been drawn by Sir Henry Wane), that
they may serve as an instructive elucidation of the remark
of Lord Macaulay, that while any time might have pro-
duced George Fox and James Naylor, to that time alone
belonged the frantic delusions of such a statesman as Vane,
and the hysterical tears of such a soldier as Cromwell:—
“You shall remonstrate forthwith to the King of Portu-
gal, that those ships now in his ports, de facto commanded
by Prince Rupert, are of a nature not capable of neutrality;
for that they were part of the Navy of England, in the real
and actual possession of the Parliament, armed, equipped,
and furnished by them in their own ports; the mariners
being also their own servants, hired by them, and placed
in those ships in the immediate service of the Parliament,
from which service, and from their duty, the said mariners
have perfidiously apostatised and made defection; and as
* Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. 22nd March, 1643.
State, 30th March 1650, MS. State Pa- * Ibid. 12th April 1650,
per Office.
WOL. II. G
82 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
fugitives and renegades have run away with the said ships,
and in the same as pirates and sea-robbers they have
made depredations, and by adding to their number the
ships by them taken were growing to a strength like to
prove dangerous, to the interruption if not the destruction
of all trade and commerce. That they are such fugitives
and renegades as have not place in the world which they
can pretend to be their own, nor have any port of their own
whither to carry their prizes, and where to make show of
any form of justice; but whatever they can by rapine take,
from any whomsoever, like so many thieves and pirates,
they truck the same away, when they can get admittance
for that thievish trade. And being, as they are, hostes
humani generis, they may neither use the law of nations,
nor are capable of protection from any prince.
“You shall signify the strict charge laid upon you by
the Commonwealth of England to surprise or destroy
those revolted ships wherever you can find them.
“If the King of Portugal shall refuse or neglect to do
you right in the premisses, then, for default of justice from
him therein, you shall seize, arrest, surprise, or destroy
in the way of justice, all such ships, either merchant or
other, belonging to the King of Portugal or any of his sub-
jects, and secure the same and all the goods therein, and
all the writings, in the same manner and form as by the
instruction given you concerning the French, to be kept
till the Parliament shall resolve what further directions
they will give concerning them.””
The “Instructions for Colonel Edward Popham,
It will be observed that the word to fall upon unexpectedly.”
“surprise” is, in these and the other * Order Book of the Council of State,
instructions to the same effect, used in 20th April 1650, MS. State Paper
its primary sense—“to take unawares, Office.
1650.] INSTRUCTIONS TO POPHAM.
83
appointed to command the second fleet ordered to go to the
southward,” dated “Whitehall, April 25, 1650,” are for the
most part the same as those before given to Blake. It will,
therefore, only be necessary to give the following portions
of them, which are, in fact, to be instructions for Blake as
well as Popham :—
“Whereas all particulars cannot be foreseen, nor posi-
tive instructions for each emergent so beforehand given,
but that many things must be left to your prudence and
discreet management, as occurrences may arise upon the
place, or from time to time fall out ; you are, therefore,
upon all such accident, or any occasion that may happen,
to use your best circumspection, and, advising with your
Council of War, to order and dispose of the said fleet, and
the ships under your command, as may be most advanta-
geous for the public, and for obtaining the ends for which
this fleet was set forth—making it your special care, in dis-
charge of that great trust committed unto you, that the Com-
monwealth receive no detriment."
“You are, upon your coming into the Bay of Weires,” or
any other place where you shall meet with Colonel Blake, to
show him these your instructions, who is hereby authorised
and required to put the same in execution jointly with
you, if you shall continue together, or severally and by
himself if you find it for the service to divide yourselves,
1 Order Book of the Council of * Oeiras. It is spelt “Oeyras” in
State, 25th April 1650, MS. State
Paper Office.—It is not unworthy of
notice that these last words are a
translation of the words by which,
in critical times, the power of the Ro-
man Consuls was made unlimited by
the decree of the Senate,_“Videant
consules me quid respublica detrimenti
capiat.”
the Wellington Despatches (vol. viii. p.
228). The Council of State dealt with
Spanish or Portuguese names somewhat
as Charles James Fox did, who, says
Lord Brougham, “preferred Cales and
Groyne to Cadiz and Corunna.”—His-
torical Sketches of Statesmen of the Time
of George III., third series, p. 203,
London, 1843.
G 2
84 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
as well as if the same had been directed particularly to
himself.” " *
On the 29th of April the Council gave an additional private
instruction to Blake and Popham, to the effect that if they
should find they were like to come to a breach with the
Ring of Portugal, by any acts they should be necessitated
to put in execution in pursuance of their instructions, they
should first send for Mr. Wane, the Resident there, to come
on board, and show him their instructions, and declare
their resolution, that he may give order for securing his
papers, and that his person may be in safety with them,
against any wrong might be done to him, or advantage
made of him against the public service.”
Rupert, in the course of his flight from Kinsale to Por-
tugal, captured four ships, which, having been fitted out by
him as men-of-war, made up his fleet to nine vessels. The
goods captured in these four ships he sold to the Portu-
guese merchants for £30,000. “These prizes,” says Rupert,
in one of his letters to Charles, “being considerable, and
being fearful of some disaster, having near three hundred
prizemen aboard us, it was generally thought fit to secure
and sell them with the first convenience, to do which no
place was thought more convenient nor safe than Lisbon.” "
Accordingly, Rupert sailed into the Tagus, and John of
Braganza, the first Portuguese king of the House of Bra-
ganza, who had been placed on the throne of Portugal by
the nobility in 1640, undertook to protect him in that
river against all his enemies. At the approach of spring,
Rupert—having, as beforementioned, fitted out his prizes as
men-of-war—dropped down the river to Belleisle, with the
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. 29th April 1650.
State, 25th April 1650, MS. State Pa- * Fitzroy MS. in Warburton, iii.
per Office. 295.
1650.] RUPERT'S DEVICE FOR DESTROYING BLAKE. 85
intention of renewing his piracies; but, before he could get
clear of the river, Blake with his fleet of five ships was at
its mouth, and Rupert, though he had nine ships against
Blake's five, anchored under the guns of the fort. Blake,
having sent an officer to ask the King's permission to at-
tack the revolted ships at their anchorage, and having met
with a refusal, affected not to comprehend the King's
answer, and ordered his boats to cross the bar. A few
shots were fired at them from Belim Castle. Blake sent a
boat to enquire the reason for this show of hostility against
a friendly Power, there being no war at that time between
Portugal and England. The officer in command replied
that he had received no orders to allow Blake's ships to
pass. Blake then sent a remonstrance to the King of Por-
tugal, according to the instructions he had received from
the Council of State, that the ships to which the King
of Portugal gave protection were a part of the English navy,
which had revolted from the Parliament of England; that
their commanders had acted as pirates and sea-robbers,
and, by adding to their fleet the ships they captured, were
growing into a power likely to prove dangerous to the law-
ful commerce of all civilised nations; that therefore they
were unable to appeal to the law of nations, or ask the
protection of any prince in their revolt and piracy, without
thereby creating a cause of war between that prince and
the Commonwealth of England."
Blake's remonstrance, strong as it was, produced not
more effect than any words, however strong, usually do ;
for the battle which the Parliament of England had now
to maintain against the world was to be fought by other
weapons than the arguments even of such a statesman as
1 Rupert MS. in Warburton, iii. 135–137, London, 1852; new edition,
300, 301 ; Dixon's Robert Blake, pp. pp. 110–112, London, 1858.
86 - COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
=
Vane. In the meantime, the weather growing foul, Blake
entered the river with his fleet, and anchored in Oeyras
Bay; but weeks passed on, and he could obtain no satis-
factory answer from the King of Portugal. During this
time an incident occurred which exhibits two bad features
that characterised the proceedings of the Royalist party—
assassination and falsehood. An attempt to destroy Blake,
not certainly in fair fight, was defended by the partisans
of the German robber and pirate by a false statement, to
the effect that some persons from the English fleet went
on shore at Belleisle to attack a hunting-party, including
Rupert, Maurice, and several other cavaliers; the fact
being that the men were sent on shore, in the ordinary
way, to obtain fresh water, and while getting it were as-
sailed by Rupert’s party, who killed one of them, wounded
three others, and made five prisoners. Towards the evening
of the same day, a bombshell placed in a double-headed
barrel, with a lock in the middle so contrived that on being
opened it would give fire to a quick-match and cause the
whole to explode, was sent by Rupert to Blake's flag-ship
in a Portuguese boat, manned by two negroes, and a sailor
dressed as a Portuguese tradesman, who was instructed
to say he was an oil-merchant come with a present for the
seamen. When these men arrived with their boat at the
ship’s stern, they found the ports there closed; and while
they were rowing round to the transom-port, some of the
crew recognised the pretended Portuguese tradesman as
one of Rupert’s men, whom they had frequently met on
shore at Belleisle; and he was immediately arrested, and
this honourable Royalist device for getting rid of Blake
discovered and baffled."
Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 140; Thurloe, i. 145, 146.—In the “First
Rupert M.S. in Warburton, iii. 305; Paper of Demands, in the name of the
1650.] BLAKE ATTACKS THE BRAZIL FLEET. 87
The time consumed in these proceedings against Rupert
shows that the Parliament of England was not yet by any
means strong enough at sea to encounter all their enemies;
and the indefatigable exertions made by Sir Henry Vane
and the Committee of the Admiralty to build new ships of
war, as well as to furnish their present fleet' with all need-
ful provisions and materials of war, form one of the most
important features in the history of that which has been
truly called “the Sheet-anchor of the British Empire,” the
British Navy. If the navy of the Parliament of England
had been as strong, or half as strong, at the beginning of
Blake's career as it was at the end of it—when the great
Admiral, “who would never strike to any other enemy,
struck his topmast to Death,” soon after his most brilliant
victory, the action at Santa Cruz—Blake would have made
very short work of such enemies as this King of Portugal
and this German pirate; but the Parliament was entering
on a new career in their naval wars, and it was natural
enough that they should make some miscalculations in the
adaptation of means to ends. Accordingly Blake, even
when strengthened by the arrival of Popham's squadron of
eight ships, still only continued to demand permission
to take vengeance for the outrages perpetrated by the
German pirate, instead of proceeding (as he did afterwards
in the case of the Barbary pirates) at once to destroy him
Parliament, made to the Public Mi-
mister of the King of Portugal,” one
article is, “That justice be done upon
those that murdered our men in Portu-
gal, being on shore, and upon those
that attempted the burning of the
Admiral's ships in the river.” —
Order Book of the Council of State, 10th
Feb. 1651, MS. State Paper Office.
! “That the Committee of the Admi-
ralty confer with Mr. Vane” [Mr.
Charles Vane, the brother of Sir
Henry Vane, who had been recalled
from Portugal by a letter of the Coun-
cil of State, 21st June 1650, MS. State
Paper Office] “concerning the present
condition of the fleet riding at the bar
of Lisbon, to the end for the speedy
supplying of them with such things as
are needful.”—Ibid. 3rd July 1650.
88 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
and his fleet. Instead of granting the permission de-
manded by Blake, the King of Portugal put some of the
English merchants under arrest. Upon this Blake seized
the whole of the Brazil fleet, of nine sail, coming out of the
river. He also threatened to seize the American fleets on
their return, if the revolters were not immediately com-
pelled to quit the Tagus. A squadron of thirteen Portuguese
men-of-war was then equipped, and ordered to join the force
under Rupert. But it is remarkable that the veteran
admirals of Portugal did not consider it prudent to attack
the English fleet, commanded by a man who had never
held a naval commission till about a year before, when
he was fifty years of age ; and who, in spite of the approach
of winter, continued to cruise at the river’s mouth, where
he attacked a Brazil fleet of twenty-three sail as it was
about to enter the Tagus, sank the Portuguese flag-ship,
destroyed three other ships, and captured the Vice-
Admiral and eleven large ships laden with the most
precious cargoes. The King of Portugal now began to
perceive that his sympathy for the cause represented by
Prince Rupert was too expensive. It was accordingly
intimated to the German princes, that the Crown of
Portugal could no longer protect them against the power
of the Commonwealth of England. Rupert therefore,
while Blake was at sea in Search of the dispersed fleet
of Brazil, dropped down the river, and got clear away
with his ships. -
The King of Portugal then despatched an envoy to
London. The Council of State insisted upon the following
conditions:—the immediate restoration of ships and goods
seized; justice upon those that murdered our men in
Portugal when on shore, and upon those that attempted
the burning of the Admiral’s ships in the river; repayment

1650.] TREATY OF PEACE WITH PORTUGAL.
89
of the charges in fitting out the several fleets sent to
Portugal, for reducing the revolted ships protected by the
King of Portugal; restitution of, or reparation for, all
English goods taken by Rupert or Maurice, or any of their
ships, and brought into Portugal and disposed of there.”
The Portuguese envoy, venturing to dispute some dates and
details, was ordered to quit the country. The King of
Portugal then sent a nobleman of high rank as his
ambassador to the Parliament of England. But delays
again arose, and it was not till January 1653 that the
treaty of peace was concluded between England and
Portugal.” Towards the end of 1652, the King of Por-
tugal had agreed to pay £50,000 to the Commonwealth, as
appears from the following minute of 24th December 1652:
“That Sir Oliver Fleming and Mr. Thurloe do receive
from the Portugal Ambassador the Bill or Bills of Ex-
change, which he shall give for the payment of £20,000 at
Lisbon, part of the £50,000 which is to be paid in whole
by the King of Portugal to this Commonwealth.” "
Rupert with his pirate fleet, after leaving Lisbon,
passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and entered the
* “First Paper of Demands, in the
name of the Parliament, made to the
Public Minister of the King of Portu-
gal.”—Order Book of the Council of
State, 10th Feb. 1653, MS. State Paper
Office.
* “At the close of the dispute with
the Court of Lisbon, the owners of the
nine ships seized and detained by Blake
at the mouth of the Tagus were allowed
to present a statement of their griev-
ances to the Judges of the Court of
Admiralty. Blake's conduct in the
matter was minutely investigated;
Admiral Popham was called on to give
evidence as to the facts; and after a
full enquiry, the Judges decided that
the General-at-sea had acted in the
spirit of his instructions. But they
acknowledged the private losses which
the owners might have suffered by the
forcible detention of their ships, and
decided that the same compensation
should be awarded to them for the
service, as in cases where ships had
been hired by the State.”—Dixon's
Robert Blake, p. 146, cites Judges MS.
Reports, March 24, State Paper Office.
* Order Book of the Council of
State, Friday, December 24, 1652, MS,
State Paper Office.
90 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
Mediterranean. A manuscript memoir, found among
Rupert’s papers, thus expresses the spirit that animated him
and his companions: “Misfortune being no novelty to us,
we plough the sea for a subsistence; and being destitute of
a port, we take the confines of the Mediterranean Sea for our
harbour: poverty and despair being our companions, and
revenge our guide.” Coasting the shores of Andalusia,
they fell in with the Malaga fleet during a dark night,
and captured two ships. Rupert then stood in for Malaga,
and sent forward one of his ships (the frigate Henry), with
instructions to take up a position between the vessels
lying outside the port and the mole, so that, when attacked
in the night, they might be prevented from retreating into
the harbour. But the design was defeated by the deser-
tion of some of the Henry’s men, who informed the
Spaniards of the intended night-attack; and a signal
from the batteries warning the ships of their danger, they
stood safely in while it was yet broad day. Rupert, finding
his plan defeated, sailed for Velez-Malaga, higher up the
coast, where some English merchant-ships were lying.
The Governor of Velez-Malaga, on hearing of the appear-
ance of Rupert on the coast, had despatched a courier to
Madrid for instructions; but, on the ground that this
messenger had not returned when Rupert arrived, he refused
to interfere, and six English ships were fired and burnt
by Rupert under the guns of the Spanish batteries.
Spain was now destined to learn that a change had
come over the scene, since that dark time in England’s
annals when her minister Gondemar had declared that
“there were no men in England.” Blake was waiting the
arrival of a supply of stores sent by the Council of State,
when the news reached him of this act of hostility com-
mitted in a friendly port. He at once turned his bows
1650.] BLAKE DESTROYS RUPERT'S FLEET. 91
towards the entrance of the Mediterranean, and passed the
Straits with all his fleet'—the first English Admiral who
had sailed in those seas since the time of the Crusades.
When he reached Malaga, he found that Rupert had left
that part of the coast. At Capo Palos, near Carthagena,
the revolted ships had last been seen in a tremendous
squall, when Rupert and his brother separated from the
rest, and ran out to sea. The other revolted ships ran
into Carthagena for shelter; and when the weather cleared,
the English fleet was seen riding before the harbour.
Blake sent a messenger to inform the governor of the
town that enemies to the Commonwealth of England had
taken refuge in that port; that he, as Admiral, carried
instructions from the English Council of State to pursue
and destroy them; and that, the two nations being then at
peace, he hoped to be allowed to execute his orders without
interference. The Spaniard sent an answer, which was
tantamount to a refusal to recognise the Parliament as
the supreme power in England. Besides this, Anthony
Ascham, the minister sent by the English Parliament to
the Court of Spain, had been basely assassinated not long
before at Madrid, by some of the servants of Hyde and
Cottington, as Dorislaus had been assassinated in Holland
by some servants of Montrose; and the Spanish Government
had, like the Dutch, taken no effective steps to punish the
assassins. Blake therefore lost no more time in messages
to the Spanish governor, but, attacking the revolters,
boarded the Roebuck, set fire to another ship, and drove
the remainder on shore. Their guns, stores, and ammuni-
tion were saved, and delivered up by the Spaniards to the
* This was in 1650. Hume, in re- fleet, except during the Crusades, had
lating Blake's entrance into the Medi- ever before sailed in those seas.”
terranean in 1654, says: “No English
92 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLANI). [CHAP. VIII.
Admiral's agent." The whole of the revolted fleet were
now captured or destroyed, with the exception of the
Reformation and the Swallow, the two ships in which
Rupert and Maurice sailed, and the Marmaduke, a ship
they had recently captured.
The cotemporary correspondence, as given by White-
lock, furnishes characteristic sketches both of Rupert and
Blake: “December 20, 1650.-Letters that Prince Rupert
came to Malaga and other ports, and fired and sank divers
English merchant-ships, and demanded the master of a
London ship, saying that he would boil him in pitch; but
the Governor of Malaga refused to deliver up the master to
him.” But the avenger of blood was behind him, for the
next entry in Whitelock is this: “December 21.—Letters
that Blake fell upon Prince Rupert in Malaga Road,” sank
two or three of his ships, ran on shore and exposed to ship-
wreck the rest of his fleet; only two ships escaped, where-
in it is conceived Prince Rupert and his brother Prince
Maurice were, and Blake in chase of them.”*
There is something strange in Rupert's luck in escaping
from Cromwell on land, and from Blake at sea. How
came it that Rupert always managed to get away un-
scathed—at Marston Moor, at Naseby, and elsewhere,
where so many valiant Royalists went down before the
Parliamentary cuirassiers and pikemen—and that now his
and his brother's ships alone escaped? Rupert was a
“tall black man,” strong of body, and cruel and fierce of
1 Dixon's Robert Blake, pp. 155— of the 30th of October 1650, dated from
161 ; Rupert MS. in Warburton, iii. aboard the Leopard in Malaga Road, be
313–318. . - reported to the Parliament.”—Order
* Whitelock's Memorials, p. 485. Book of the Council of State, Friday,
* There is a minute of the Council of 13th December 1650, MS. State Paper
State of Friday, 13th December 1650, Office.
“That the letter from Colonel Blake * Whitelock's Memorials, p. 485.
1650.] RUPERT's LUCK IN ESCAPING. 93
heart. His bodily strength and, perhaps, superior horse-
manship may have enabled him to escape on land, without
making the supposition that he managed to get the credit
of being a dashing cavalry officer without much exposing
his own person. But that explanation will not extend to
a naval fight: and the two ships, in which he and his
brother were, must have escaped by being less exposed to
the enemy's fire than the rest of the fleet. Rupert by
this time knew Blake too well to wait for his onset.
Blake's height of 5 feet 6 inches, though too short for a
Merton fellowship, was far more than a match for the 6
feet odd of the “fiery Rupert,” as his admirers love to
call him. To fight Blake was a very different thing
from cutting off a defenceless man’s ears, or boiling him
in pitch.
It is incorrect to infer from a man’s good horsemanship
that he is a man of courage. Good horsemanship depends
On the conformation and disposition of the muscles. In
some persons what is called the riding muscle (the muscle
on the inside of the thigh) is not only undeveloped, but
incapable of strong development; while the muscle on the
outside of the thigh, on which walking depends, is well
developed. To call a man who rides well “a dauntless
rider” looks like brag ; though it may be quite true that the
man is a fearless rider. But the “fearlessness” is only the
confidence arising from the feeling that the muscular power
gives a security unattended with risk; and is a totally dif-
ferent thing from the fearlessness which faces death, where
no strength of muscle can be of any avail. A man who
exposes himself to a shower of shot, as Blake constantly
did, shows courage. A man who, trusting to his thews
and sinews, and the power they give him of managing his
horse, attacks men of far less muscular force, and worse-
94 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
mounted than himself, merely shows the confidence a
strong animal has in his strength. This latter quality
was the sort of courage possessed by Prince Rupert—very
different from the sort of courage evinced by Blake, and
also from the sort of courage evinced by Harrison and by
Cromwell. The courage of Harrison, indeed, was of that
fiery and enthusiastic nature, which made him have
sowmehat the relation to Cromwell that Murat bore to
Bonaparte. Harrison’s fate, too, bears some resemblance
to that of Murat; so that it may be said of Harrison, as
it has been said of Murat :
Was that haughty crest laid low,
By a slave's dishonest blow 2
Little didst thou deem, when dashing
On thy war-horse through the ranks,
Like a stream which burst its banks,
While helmets cleft and sabres clashing,
Shone and shiver'd fast around thee,
Of the fate at last which found thee.
Indeed, if ever man in his warlike enthusiasm resembled
the war-horse in Job, it was Harrison. “He mocketh at
fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from
the sword. He saith among the trumpets, Ha! haſ and
he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains,
and the shouting.” The very first time that Rupert
came into conflict with Cromwell and Harrison, namely at
Marston Moor, he was defeated in less than half an hour;
and he and his Life-Guards, the picked men of the Royalist
cavalry, were driven off the field in irretrievable confusion
and headlong flight. -
On the 2nd of November, 1650, the Council of State wrote
a letter to Blake, informing him that they had ordered
Captain William Penn (afterwards Admiral Sir William
Penn), “with as many ships as could be fitted out, to sail
1650.] PENN'S UNSUCCESSFUL PURSUIT of RUPERT. 95
southward, both for the prevention of Rupert, as much as
he is able with this strength, from doing further mischief
on the good people of this nation; and for the surprisal or
destruction of as many of the Portugal’s fleet as he can
make attempt on, in their return homeward from Brazil,”
In this letter the Council also say: “We desire that you,
with the rest of the fleet, will repair home with all the
speed conveniently you may; that we may, upon conference
with you, the better understand the state of affairs in
those parts where you are and have been ; and also may
give timely orders for fitting out those ships with you,
against the next spring, if there should be occasion for
their service.” On the 25th of the same month, Penn
received a commission to command the Fairfaa, a new
frigate of 50 guns lately built at Deptford, and also
another commission, to command-in-chief a squadron of
eight ships for the service specified above.
Penn sailed on the 30th of November from Spithead, in
the Centurion. On the 17th of January 1654, he made the
island of St. Michael, in the Azores, where, on the 22nd,
he was joined by Lawson, who brought him out the Fair-
fair. After cruising for some weeks between the Western
Islands, the Rock of Lisbon, and Cadiz, Penn entered the
Mediterranean, with his whole fleet, on the 29th of March.
Penn’s Journal from the time of his setting sail from Spit-
head, on the 30th of January 1654, to the time of his
return to England, in March 165%, has been published by
Mr. Granville Penn from the papers in the possession of
his family. On the 18th of March there is this entry :
“I went to Pendennis Castle; having not put foot on land
since my departure from this place outward-bound, which
* The Council of State to General Blake, Thurloe's State Papers, vol. ii.
p. 93.
96 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. . [CHAP. VIII.
was in last December was twelve months.” And on the
1st of April there is this entry: “About 4 afternoon,
we anchored in the Downs, (praised be the name of our
Heavenly Father l) where I met with the Right Hon.
General Robert Blake.”” His pursuit of Rupert, however,
was unsuccessful. There is an entry in Penn’s Journal,
which mentions the foundering at sea of two of Rupert’s
three ships: “26th November, 1651.--I received a letter
from Mr. Hill at Cadiz, in which he informs me that the Re-
formation and the Revenge, formerly called the Marmaduke,
were sunk between the islands St. Michael and Terceira;
of which ships’ companies none were saved but Prince
Rupert and nine more, in the Reformation’s pinnace.” ”
It would seem from this that Prince Rupert considered
it the duty of a commander to be not the last but the
first to save himself when his ship was sinking. This is
in accordance with a character that has come down from
those times linked, if not with one virtue, with many
crimes. He and his brother, after pursuing their piracies
for some time in the West Indies, parted company in a
storm. Maurice was never heard of again; but Rupert
lived to enjoy the spectacle of the ignoble revenge exe-
cuted, by command of his royal cousin, on the remains of
his conquerors; and of the great nation, which Blake
had raised to the height of power and glory, reduced to
the lowest depth of discomfiture and disgrace.
On the 11th of January, 1654, the Council of State
ordered “that Mr. Frost do prepare a letter of thanks to
be sent to Colonel Blake, in pursuance of an Order of
* Granville Penn's Memorials of Sir * Ibid. p. 394.
William Penn, vol. i. p. 393. * Ibid. p. 387.
1651.] BLAKE CAPTURES FOUR FRENCH SHIPS. 97
Parliament, for the good services done by him against
Prince Rupert.”
I have already mentioned the seizure of many English
merchant-ships by French privateers, and the issuing by
the English Admiralty of letters of marque or reprisals
to the English merchants. Hitherto the English admirals
had avoided attacking French ships. But the revolters
having been protected by the French authorities at Toulon,
Blake, on his voyage homeward, captured four French
prizes. One of these was a frigate of 40 guns, re-
specting the capture of which the following story is told.
Blake signalled for the captain of the French frigate to
come on board his flag-ship, which the Frenchman did.
The Admiral told him he was a prisoner, and asked him to
give up his sword. The Frenchman refused; upon which
Blake told him he might go back to his ship, and fight it
out as long as he was able. The French captain thanked
him, returned to his ship; and, after two hours’ hard fight-
ing, struck his flag, and being brought again on board
Blake's ship, made a low bow, kissed his sword, and de-
livered it to Blake. A somewhat similar story is told of
Monk, whose character, except in courage, bore little re-
semblance to Blake’s. In One of his campaigns in Scot-
land, Monk having arrived one day at the house of a
certain Scotch laird, found it fit for the reception of a
small garrison. But the laird refused to grant Monk’s
request to that effect. “Well,” said Monk, “I will not
violate hospitality,” and he immediately commanded the
officers who accompanied him to evacuate the house.
“Now,” said he to the laird, “look to the defence, for
we are about to attack.” The laird, however, though
1 Order Book of the Council of State, 11th Jan. 165%, MS. State Paper Office.
VOT,. II. II
98 r COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
==
surrounded by a great number of his friends and relations,
thought it wise to make terms, and consented to receive a
garrison, on condition that a portion of his house should
be set apart for his own use.
Though the Parliament of England had now got rid of
the two German pirates, Rupert and Maurice, they had
still upon their hands the work of ridding themselves of a
strong force of English pirates, who from the Scilly Isles
and Jersey infested the English Channel. Rupert, at the
commencement of his piratical career, had fixed on that
remarkable group of small rocky islets lying off the Land’s
End in Cornwall, known as the Scilly Isles,' as a convenient
situation for the establishment of one or more strongholds
for the reception of his plunder. Nature and art seemed
to have combined to adapt these islands for such a pur-
pose. Intricate channels with dangerous sunken rocks,
and the frequent occurrence of the most sudden and
violent storms, were the obstacles opposed by nature to the
approach of hostile ships; and the art of man had erected
block-houses and batteries, connected with each other
by lines and breastworks, at those places where a landing
seemed most likely to be attempted. It has been observed,
by those who have kept journals, that not more than six
days of perfect calm occur in the course of the year. This
violent and almost constant action of the sea renders the
opinion not improbable, that these islands have, at some
period antecedent to authentic history, been separated from
the mainland. From the same cause the islands, though for
themost part composed of granite,” are undergoing a gradual
In the “Order Book of the Council the States-General of the United Pro-
of State” they are described as “the vinces, Order Book of the Council of
islands of Scillyes or Sorlings, ancient- State, 2nd April 1651, MS. State Paper
ly a part of the territories belonging Office.
to the Commonwealth of England.”— * A Guide to Mount's Bay and the
Instructions for the Ambassadors with Land's End, by a Physician (Dr. Paris):
1651.] ROYALIST PIRATES IN THE SCILLY ISLES.
2 :
• * , ;
diminution. At present there are more than 140 islaniš
of which six are inhabited, containing altogether a popu-
lation of about 2,500. The area of the islands varies from
St. Mary’s, the largest, about 1,500 acres, to less than one
acre. The islands form a compact group, rising for the
most part abruptly, with rugged sides, from the deep sea
around them. In the channels which separate the islands
the depth of the sea is much less; some of these channels
being dry at low water, and others only kneedeep. The
employments of the inhabitants of the Scilly Isles are
agriculture, fishing, making kelp, and pilotage."
St. Mary’s, the most important island, consists of two
portions; the smaller of which, called “The Hugh,” is
joined to the other part by a low sandy isthmus, on which
stands “Hugh Town,” the principal place in the island.
This island is about 2% miles long, 1% mile broad, and
about 8 miles in circumference. The Hugh is a steep hill
rising about 110 feet above the level of the sea, and was
then fortified by lines, having a circuit of more than a mile,
with 18 bastions or batteries, and enclosing a small fort
called Star Castle. Tresco, the island next in importance,
is inhabited chiefly by pilots and fishermen. Most of the
houses are on the north-east side, near the beach, opposite
a harbour called Old Grinsey Harbour; and form a village
called Dolphin Town, which may perhaps be an abbrevia-
tion of Godolphin Town, the Godolphin family having
been long the lessees of the islands. A stone tower, called
Oliver Cromwell’s Castle, now deserted, commands the har-
bour of New Grinsey, on the west side of the island; and
near it are the ruins of, a fortress, called King Charles's
London, 1824.—The granite is, accord- ! A View of the Present, State of
ing to Dr. Paris, a continuation of the the Scilly Islands; by the Rev. George
Devonian range. Woodley, London, 1822,



H 2
100 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII
Castle. St. Martin’s, nearly 2 miles long and about 6
miles in circumference, is chiefly inhabited by pilots and
fishermen. About the middle of the 17th century, this
island was uninhabited, but there are indications of its
having been peopled at an earlier period. St. Agnes is
a mile in length, half a mile in breadth, on an average,
and 4% miles in circumference. St. Agnes is very irregu-
lar in outline, and is surrounded by rocks. Though the
soil is the most fertile, and now the best cultivated, in the
whole group, the shore is rocky and almost inaccessible,
which may be the cause of its having apparently at that
time been considered the most important of the islands
after St. Mary’s.
In these islands 2,000 men were placed as a garrison,
and with them was a considerable number of Royalist
gentry, all under the command of Sir John Grenville,
designated “Governor of the Islands of St. Mary’s and
St. Agnes, in Scilly, on the behalf of His Majesty.”
Before Blake drove him into Kinsale, Rupert had carried
the plunder he got by piracy into these islands; and, in a
letter to Sir John Grenville, in April 1649, he says he
“doubts not ere long to see Scilly a second Venice.” "
This shows that Rupert, if neither a great commander
nor a great statesman, possessed at least a bold imagina-
tion. In March 1649 he sent to Sir John Grenville, from
Ireland, some ships laden with corn, salt, iron, and steel.
And in April, in the letter to Grenville quoted above, he
says: “You will receive, if these ships come safe, such
provisions as we can spare here, and also some men, which
I was fain to send out of my own regiment. They are all
* In the Articles of Surrender, of 23rd the latter is styled “Governor of the
May 1651, cited by Mr. Dixon (Life of Islands of St. Mary's and St. Agnes, in
Robert Blake, p. 169, note), between Scilly, on the behalf of His Majesty.”
Admiral Blake and Sir John Grenville,
Ç © tº ë
tº tº
•. ** © tº º, • *e : :
. • * * tº
• * & tº - 4
1651.] ROYALISTS IN THE SCILLY ISLES, 101
armed, and have some to spare. The officers have for-
merly served his Majesty. You may trust them. I doubt
not ere long to see Scilly a second Venice. It will be for
our security and benefit; for if the worst come to the
worst, it is but going to Scilly with this fleet, where, after
a little while, we may get the King a good subsistence;
and, I believe, we shall make a shift to live in spite of all
factions.” . It is observable, however, that between April
1649 and the end of 1650, Rupert had altered his opinion
about the Scilly Isles as a place of security and benefit; for,
after his utter discomfiture by Blake, he did not return
thither, but sailed for the West Indies. * .
But, though Rupert did not join them again, the Royalist
pirates in the Scilly Isles became so active as to call for
the particular attention of the Council of State in the be-
ginning of the year 1651. In February of that year we
meet with notices, in the “Order Book of the Council of
State,” of “losses by pirates upon the west coast.” On the
26th of March following the Council of State ordered a
letter to be written to Major-General Desborowe, to let him
know “ that the Council is informed that Sir John Green-
vill, Governor of Scillie, doth, contrary to the law of arms,
detain and keep in strict imprisonment divers persons who
are merchantmen and traders; to desire him to seize the
persons of the relations of the said Sir John Greenvill in
Cornwall, and to keep them in safe custody until he shall
dismiss the said merchantmen, now prisoners with him;
and he is to give notice thereof to Sir John Greenvill
before his doing of it, and to expect [wait for his answer;
and upon his writing back, to certify to the Council what
effect it hath had with him, and to desert therein [to do
| Fitzroy M.S. in Warburton, vol. iii. * Order Book of the Council of State,
pp. 289–295. 18th Feb. 1654, MS. State Paper Office.
102 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. VIII.
=
nothing further therein] till further order from the Coun-
Cil.” I e
On the 31st of March 1651 leave is given by the
Council of State, to certain petitioners, to buy their ship,
taken by two Jersey men-of-war”—that is, by two Royalist
pirate-ships having their stronghold in the isle of Jersey,
as others had in the Scilly Isles. But on the 18th of the
same month the Council of State ordered, “That it be re-
turned in answer to the petition of George Dickens, that
this Council cannot treat with Rupert for any exchanges,
but the Council will be ready to grant letters of reprisal.”
On the 1st of April 1651, the Council of State ordered,
“That a letter be written to Colonel Blake, to inclose him
a copy of the Order of Parliament, to let him know that
the Parliament is informed that Wan Tromp [sic] is before
Scilly, and hath refused to give an account of his being
there to some of the Commonwealth ships that have
demanded an account of him ; to desire him therefore to
repair thither with the ships bound for the Barbadoes, and
likewise with the three ships under his command appointed
for the Irish Seas; * and demand of him the cause of his
being there, and not to depart from thence until he hath
received such an answer as may be for the honour and
interest of the Commonwealth; and he is to give such
orders for the guard of the Irish coast as he shall think fit,
during the time he shall be detained in this service.” "
* Order Book of the Council of the squadron designed for the Irish
State, 26th March 1651, MS. State Seas.”—Ibid. 15th March 1653. On
Paper Office.
2 Ibid. 31st March 1651.
* Ibid. 18th March 165?.
* On the 15th of March 165? an
order had been made by the Council of
State, “That Colonel Blake command
the 13th of February last £1,000 had
been ordered to Colonel Blake by the
Parliament. (Ibid.) The warrant for
payment of this sum is dated 18th
March 165?.
* Ibid. 1st April, 1651.
1651.] THE SCILLY ISLES SURRENDERED TO BLAKE. 103
On the same day it was ordered, “That a letter be
written to Sir George Ayscue, that the force appointed to go
with Colonel Blake to Wan Tromp must be made up with
the ships under his command.” "
The complication produced by the piratical proceedings
of Rupert is shown by the instructions given by the
Council of State to Blake on this occasion. For while
Blake is directed, by these instructions, to require Tromp
to desist from any attempt prejudicial to the honour or
interest of the Commonwealth of England, he is “to
signify to the said Wan Tromp, that by requiring him to
desist it is not the intention of this Commonwealth to
protect those who are now in possession of Scilly in the
wrongs they have done the Dutch, or to hinder them from
righting themselves upon them, so as they act nothing to
the prejudice of the honour or interest of this Common-
wealth, but shall be ready to give them all assistance therein,
and expect the like from them in what you are there to
execute.” ”
A satisfactory account of Tromp's fleet having been
received from the States-General of Holland, Blake pro-
ceeded with his fleet against the Scilly Islands. Having
summoned the Governor, Sir John Grenville, to surrender
the islands to the Parliament of England, and not receiving
a satisfactory answer, he ordered 800 men, under the com-
mand of Captain Morris, to land in Tresco, the island, as
we have seen, next in importance to St. Mary’s. A garrison
of nearly a thousand men were posted behind a line of
breastworks to oppose them. But Blake's troops threw
themselves into the water, waded on shore, and, as soon
as they were formed, attacked the entrenchments. The
Order Book of the Council of * Instructions for Colonel Robert
State, 1st April 1651, MS. State Paper Blake.—Ibid.
Office.
104 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, [CHAP. VIII
Royalists made a stout resistance, but when night came on
they withdrew to their boats, and passed over to St. Mary’s.
At daybreak Blake erected a battery on Tresco, so placed
as to command the roadstead of St. Mary’s ; but seeing that
his battery produced little effect on the castle and fortifi-
cations, he brought his frigates through the intricate and
dangerous channels, and planted them in the roadstead
under the castle guns—a feat which has been achieved so
often since, that, as Mr. Dixon justly observes, “it is not
easy now to estimate the daring which it then implied.
Up to that day it had been considered a fundamental
maxim in marine warfare, that a ship could not attack a
castle or other strong fortification with any hope of success.
Blake was the first to perceive and demonstrate the fallacy
of this maxim ; and the experiment, afterwards repeated
by him in the more brilliant attacks on Porto Farino and
Santa Cruz, was first tried at the siege of St. Mary’s.” "
Notwithstanding a furious cannonade from the castle, the
guns of the frigates having made a practicable breach,
Blake ordered an assault to be made. But Grenville then
sent to beg a parley, which ended in an engagement on
his part to surrender the islands, with their garrisons,
stores, arms, ammunition, standards, and all other imple-
ments and materials of war, on condition that the lives of
the officers, soldiers, and volunteers should be spared. The
soldiers and sailors were allowed to enter the Parliament's
service. Sir John Grenville and the Royalist gentlemen
taken with him were put on board Sir George Ayscue's
squadron, and carried into Plymouth Sound. The Parlia-
ment, acting in the lenient spirit of Blake’s articles, per-
mitted Grenville to enjoy his forfeited family estates without
' Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 168; and p. 138 of the new edition.

1651.] TACT OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 105
molestation." Under date 9th August 1651, there is the
following entry in the rough draft of the Order Book of the
Council of State—“Mem. : Colonel Blake to leave two ships
about Scilly.”
There is a minute of the Council of State of the 22nd
March of this year, relating to a ship taken by Sir George
Ayscue, which I will transcribe, as throwing light on the
nature and effect of the Government of England at that
time: “That a letter be written to Sir George Ayscue, to
let him know that the Council, since the receipt of his
letter, have had notice that there is more money in the
ship Lemmon than is expressed in his letter; to desire him
to make an effectual search in the ship, and to compare
the bills of exchange with the inventory taken of the goods,
and to give an account to the Council.” The tact of the
statesmen who formed the Council of State is manifest in
the careful wording of this minute, which, it will be
observed, does not contain the slightest insinuation of
any intention (which it may be hoped did not exist) on the
part of Sir George Ayscue to appropriate to himself a part
of the money referred to without the knowledge of the
Council, but yet adopts an effectual course for securing
an exact account of the money. One decided advantage
of a Government like this Council of State, was its capa-
bility of appreciating the pure honesty and honour of a
man like Blake, who would have received no credit, but on
the contrary discredit, for his honesty from any of the
Stuarts; would have been set down as an “impracticable
fool” (that is the favourite phrase), not only by the Govern-
ment of Charles I. and Charles II., but by many a Govern-
ment since. This result was, I apprehend, produced, in part
' Dixon's Robert Blake, pp. 166–169, March 22, 1652, MS. State Paper
and the authorities there cited. Office.
* Order Book of the Council of State,
106 .COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. "[CHAP. VIII.
at least, by the large number of persons composing the
Council of State. For though that Council, like other
Councils, doubtless contained several unscrupulous men, it
also had its own public opinion, which would be in favour
of such a man as Blake; whereas if a man cheated or
robbed the public, and gave half of his plunder to the
Stuart, the Stuart approved of the proceeding." But such
a proceeding was difficult or impracticable with a Council
of State consisting of 41 members, of whom as many as
88 (as appears by the MS. minutes) were sometimes
present together.
* The Lord Cottington, Chancellor
of the Exchequer, to the Lord Deputy
of Ireland, January 27, 1635: “When
William Raylton first told me of your
Lordship's intention touching Mount-
norris's place for Sir Adam Loftus, and
the distribution of monies for the
effecting thereof, I fell upon the right
way, which was to give the money to
him that really could do the business,
which was the King himself; and this
hath so far prevailed, as by this post
your Lordship will receive His Ma-
jesty's letter to that effect; so as there
you have your business done without
noise: and now it rests that the money
be speedily paid, and made over hither
with all expedition.”—Strafford's Let-
ters and Despatches, vol. i. p. 511.
CHAPTER, TX.
THE fate of Dorislaus and of Ascham showed that the
post of ambassador from the English Parliament to foreign
Powers was a post of more danger than honour. For a
death like that of Dorislaus and Ascham was worse than a
soldier’s death on the field of battle, and was unattended
by the circumstances that to a victorious soldier may take
from death all its bitterness. Notwithstanding, however,
the sad fate of Dorislaus, the Parliament of England re-
solved to send another envoy to the States of Holland; for,
as has been said, they were desirous not only of friendly
relations but of close alliance with the Dutch Republic,
which in its form of government they considered as bearing
a close resemblance to that form of government which
they had established in England, and according to which
they had styled themselves “The Parliament of the
Commonwealth of England.” They had accordingly
appointed Walter Strickland, one of their members, as their
agent to the United Provinces.
On the 21st of June 1650, the Council of State had
recalled Walter Strickland, by the following order, which
explains the reason of his recall: “That a letter be written
to Mr. Strickland, to recall him from his residence with
the States-General, the State being very sensible of the
slight put upon them by not receiving of him.”
| Order Book of the Council of State, June 21, 1650, MS. State Paper Office.
108 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. IX.
The Council of State did not, however, yet give up the
hope of peace instead of war with the Dutch ; and they
resolved to make another attempt, and to send this time
two ambassadors, instead of one agent or envoy. Accord-
ingly, on the 22nd of January 1650, they made the following
orders: “That such persons as shall be sent from this
Commonwealth to the present Assembly of the United
Provinces be sent in the quality of Ambassadors. That the
number of persons who are to go as Ambassadors shall be
two—Walter Strickland, Esquire, and the Lord Chief
Justice St. John.” St. John presented a petition to the
House, praying to be excused from this embassy. But,
upon a division, it was resolved, by 42 against 29, that he
should go.”
The opinion of the Council of State as to the importance
of the mission may be inferred from the fact of their ap-
pointing Lord Chief Justice St. John one of the ambas-
sadors. John Thurloe, whose patron through life St. John
had been—and who soon after, on the death of Walter Frost
the elder, became Secretary of the Council of State, and
subsequently the secretary of Cromwell—accompanied St.
John and Strickland as their secretary.
Oliver St. John, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, had argued
the case of ship-money in the Exchequer Chamber as one
of Hampden’s counsel. This would naturally bring him
into frequent communication with Hampden. With
Cromwell he was connected by family ties (having married
a cousin of Cromwell) as well as by political and religious
opinions.” It is not improbable that St. John was indebted
* Order Book of the Council of well to Lincoln's Inn bears, after the
State, Jan. 22, 165%, MS. State Paper names of the sureties, “Ri. Graves,
Office. John Thurloe,” the words “Admissus
* Parl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 1362. ' pr. Ol. St. John.”—Admission Book of
* The admission of Richard Crom. Lincoln's Inn,
1651.] ST. JOHN AND STRICKLAND AMBASSADORS, 109
for his introduction to professional business to the
powerful interest of the Earl of Bedford, whose great
landed possessions would give him much influence with
attorneys, and “to whom,” says Clarendon, “St. John was
allied (being a natural son of the House of Bolingbroke),
and by him brought into all matters where himself was to
be concerned.” St. John, like Hampden and Cromwell,
was a man whose power in the Parliament was not to be
measured by his power as a Parliamentary speaker. At
the first opening of the Long Parliament, Pym appeared
to be far the most powerful man in the House of Commons;
but he was, observes Clarendon, “ much governed in private
designing by Mr. Hampden and Mr. St John.”” Clarendon
describes St. John as “a man reserved, and of a dark
and clouded countenance; very proud, and conversing
with very few, and those men of his own humour and
inclinations.” ”
To St. John, as Solicitor-General, had fallen the duty
of carrying up to the Lords the Bill of Attainder against
the Earl of Strafford, and there is one passage, in
particular, in his speech on that occasion which has been
often quoted and much criticised: “My Lords,” he said,
“he that would not have had others to have a law, why
should he have any himself? Why should not that be
done to him that himself would have done to others?
It is true we give law to hares and deer, because they be
beasts of chase : it was never accounted either cruelty or
foul play to knock foxes and wolves on the head as they
can be found, because these be beasts of prey. The
warrener sets traps for polecats and other vermin, for
preservation of the warren.” “
* Clarendon's Hist, vol. i. pp. 324, * Ilid, vol. i. p. 246.
325. * Rushworth, vol. viii, p. 703,
* Ibid. vol. iv. p. 437.
110 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. IX.
-
Notwithstanding the censure which has been bestowed
on this argument of St. John, while the argument of Pym.
has escaped such censure, it will be observed that St. John
really argues the case as a statesman, and Pym as an
orator, but neither as a statesman nor a lawyer. As all the
laws against treason in England had down to that time
been made to protect the King and not the subject,' it
was not to be expected that the English law of treason
should contain any power to punish an aggressor who strove,
as Strafford unquestionably had done, to make the English
king absolute and Englishmen slaves. Consequently,
when Pym says that “nothing can be more equal than
that he should perish by the justice of that law, which he
would have subverted; ” that “there are marks enough to
trace this law to the very original of this kingdom;” and
that “if it hath not been put in execution for 240
years, it was not for want of law,” ” he speaks rhetori-
cally, and assumes the existence of a law which did not
exist: whereas St. John put the case upon its true basis—
* Hobbes—who, though the slave of
fear, was not, like most men, the slave
of words—saw this with his usual clear-
ness. “And for those men,” he says,
“who had skill in the laws, it was no
great sign of understanding, not to
perceive that the laws of the land were
made by the King to oblige his sub-
jects to peace and justice, and not, to
oblige himself that made them.”—Behe-
moth, part iii. pp. 254, 255, London,
1862. The constitutional timidity of
Hobbes, which in his Latin autobio-
graphy he at once admits and accounts
for—he was born April 5, 1588,
Atque metum tantum concepit tune
mea mater,
Ut pareret geminos, meque metumque
simul,-
explains much of his aversion to all re-
sistance to constituted authority. His
timidity made him shrink from and
even abhor the very idea of resistance;
for resistance implied war, and in
Hobbes's mind war implied all that was
most detestable—“no arts, no letters,
no society, and, which is worst of all,
continual fear and danger of violent
death.”—Leviathan, part i. c. 13. But
with all Hobbes's intellectual power,
this defect in his organisation would
have reduced his countrymen to the
condition of Hindus. Luckily, England
produced in that age organisations very
different from his.
* Rushworth, vol. viii. pp. 669, 670.
1651.] CHARACTER OF OLIVER ST. JOHN. 111
that he whose proved purpose had been to reduce English-
men to the condition of serfs, who should have no law but
the will of an absolute king, should be destroyed as a public
enemy, or a dangerous and noxious beast of prey.
It will be perceived, then, that when the Council of State
of “The Parliament of the Commonwealth of England ”
of 1651 resolved to send Oliver St. John as their ambas-
sador to the States of the Netherlands, they made a very
different selection from that made by Queen Elizabeth (who
has obtained much credit for her choice of ministers at
home and abroad), when, in 1588, she despatched as her
envoys to the Netherlands two doctors of law—“very slow
old gentlemen,” one of whom valued himself above all
things upon his Latinity, and the other was “a formalist
and a pedant, full of precedents and declamatory common-
places which he mistook for eloquence,” —to be duped and
laughed at by Alexander Farnese. “A very slow old gentle-
man, this Doctor Dale,” wrote Parma to Philip II. ; “ he
was here in the time of Madam my mother, and has also
been ambassador at Vienna.”” “If Valentine Dale,” says
Mr. Motley, “were a slow old gentleman, he was keen,
caustic, and rapid as compared to Daniel Rogers,” the other
egregious doctor selected for that difficult work by the
wisdom of Elizabeth. It is enough to read the account,
so ably given by Mr. Motley, of the conferences between
those men and Farnese, to enable us to see the full force
of Blake’s remark about preventing “foreigners from
fooling us.”
Whatever else might turn up out of the mission to their
High Mightinesses the States of the Netherlands of Oliver
St. John, it may be pretty safely concluded that that dark
Motley's History of the United * Ibid. p.373.
Netherlands, vol. ii. pp. 373–375. * Ibid. p 374.
112 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. IX.
and subtle spirit—the familiar (though how far the confi-
dant we know not, and can never know) of a darker, a more
powerful, and more subtle spirit—would not be “fooled ”
by them, as Queen Elizabeth's envoys had been fooled by
Alexander Farnese.
To prevent such another outrage as had been perpetrated
upon the unfortunate Dorislaus, forty gentlemen were ap-
pointed to attend the ambassadors St. John and Strick-
land, at once for their security and honour; “ten thou-
sand pounds,” adds Ludlow, “being delivered to the Lord
Ambassadors’ steward, for the expense of the embassy.”
In the sum here mentioned Ludlow, however, is in error, as
appears from the following minute of the Council of State,
under date 30th January 165}:—“That £3,000, besides the
£1,000 already paid, be furnished to the ambassadors to
Bolland.” -
But though the forty gentlemen appointed as a guard to
the ambassadors of the English Commonwealth proved
sufficient to protect them from actual assassination—which
was still the grand weapon of the successors in Europe, in
the 17th century, of those who, in the 16th century, had
assassinated De Coligny and William the Silent, making
Louisa de Coligny an orphan and twice a widow—they
were not sufficient to protect them from repeated affronts
and insults, and from repeated attempts at assassination,
by the Royalists. Thus, Mr. Strickland’s coachman and
another of his servants were attacked by six cavaliers at
their master’s own door; the former of whom received a
cut upon his head, and the latter lost his sword in the fray.
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 344, State, Jan. 30, 1652, MS. State Paper
2nd edition, London, 1721. Office.
* Order Book of the Council of
THE ENGLISH AMBASSADORS INSULTED.
1651.] 113
The threats of the Royalists ran so high that the Ambassa-
dors’ domestics were obliged to keep constant watch by
turn. A design was formed to assassinate Lord Chief
Justice St. John, and an attempt was made to break into
his chamber. Prince Edward, one of the Queen of
Bohemia’s sons, and a brother of the pirates Rupert and
Maurice, walking in the Park at the Hague with his sister,
and meeting the ambassadors in their coach, called out to
them, “O you rogues, you dogs l’” with many other simi-
lar expressions. There is another story of a sort of ren-
counter in the Park at the Hague, between the Duke of
York and Chief Justice St. John, told by a French writer,
who gives it on the authority of a gentleman resident in
IIolland, when the affair happened. St. John, taking a
walk in the Park at the Hague, met the Duke of York, also
walking, and was grossly insulted by him—so grossly that,
says the writer who relates the story, “in all probability,
the dispute would not have ended without bloodshed, had
not the company upon the walk interfered and parted
them.” - - -
And truly the dispute did not end without bloodshed.
It might seem a small matter to a weak-minded and petu-
lant boy (the Duke of York was at this time about 18),
who, when he attained all the manhood he ever had, was
only remarkable for the hardness of his heart and the
softness of his brains,” to insult the Ambassador of the
Government which was to make England famous and
terrible over the world; but for the insults of such repre-
1 Parl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 164, and and Baroness of Darlington, was
the authorities there cited.
* According to Horace Walpole
(Reminiscences), Catherine Sedley, one.
of James the Second's mistresses
whom he made Countess of Dorchester
WOL. II.
agcustomed to wonder what James
chose his mistresses for. “We were
none of us handsome,” said she ; “and
if we had wit, he had not wit enough
to find it out.”
I
114 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. IX.
º
sentatives of the divinity of kingship, the Dutch were to
pay very dearly. -
There can be little doubt that the Dutch Government
could have prevented all this, if they had been fully re-
solved to do so. For William II. of Nassau, Prince of
Orange, who had married Mary, daughter of Charles I., King
of England, had died just before this time; and his post-
humous son, born in 1650, William III. of Nassau, Prince
of Orange, and ultimately King of England, was then a
helpless infant, whose youth was destined to suffer, from
the jealousy and hostility caused by his father's infringe-
ment of the constitutional rights of the States of the
Netherlands. It could not therefore be said that the
Dutch Government was at that time in the hands of a son-
in-law of Charles I., who might be expected to look with
no friendly eye upon a Government formed of the men who
had brought his father-in-law to the block. But the
Dutch Government, though at that time calling itself a
republic, was a republic with a very narrow basis. The
election of the magistrates or councillors of the cities, who
with the nobles formed the Provincial States, the deputies
chosen by which formed the States-General, had been
originally in the burghers at large. But during the con-
fusion of the great struggle against Philip II. of Spain, it
was found convenient to invest the magistrates with the
power of filling up vacancies in their own number. This
irregularity continued when the necessity for it had ceased,
and the consequence was that the Government, though in
form a republic, was a narrow oligarchy; and probably did
not feel itself attracted towards the Government calling
itself the Commonwealth of England, either by admira-
tion of the constitution of the English Government, or by
approbation of its proceedings. The Dutch Government,
1651.] CHARACTER OF THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT. 115
moreover, had passed from the condition in which a
Government is content with defensive strength, to that
in which its strength is apt to become aggressive. For
the Dutch Government of that time possessed the most
powerful navy and the greatest admirals then in the world
—a navy compared to which any navy they had yet seen
possessed by England, they looked upon but as a collection
of small privateers and corsairs, which they could easily
sweep from the face of the sea. They were destined, in
the course of two short years, to find themselves somewhat
out in their reckonings. Yet it is not surprising that they
should not have then known what England was capable of;
for at that time England did not know herself what genius
and valour could accomplish when they have freed them-
selves from the withering spell of tyranny combined with
imbecility.
There was no inconsiderable amount of baseness as well
as of shortsightedness in the conduct of the Dutch at this
time. The baseness was in some degree the cause of the
shortsightedness; for it was the cold, calculating, and
nevertheless shortsighted baseness of commercial avarice,
which pursues its ends with a reckless rapacity, as blind to
all consequences, but the glutting of its own appetite for
what it calls wealth, as the ravenous fury of a hungry
tiger. Thus the Dutch, while valuing themselves on
being a republic, were willing to lend their aid to the
tyrants of Europe to destroy the English Commonwealth,
shutting their eyes to the fact that their own destruction
would be the next object those tyrants would aim at.
This is established on the testimony both of royalist and
republican writers. According to Hobbes, “the true quarrel
on the Dutch part was their greediness to engross all
I 2
116 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. IX.
traffic, and a false estimate of our and their own strength.” "
Ludlow's testimony is to the same effect, and is strength-
ened by his actual experience of the Dutch, in purchasing
an agreement with England, after the Restoration, with the
price of blood, in delivering three of King Charles’s judges
into the hands of their enemies, which made him decline
the offer made to him from Holland, of the command of a
body of land-forces to be shipped on board the Dutch
fleet. “All men knew,” says Ludlow, “they preferred
the profits of trade before any other thing in the world:”
choosing rather to see a tyranny than a commonwealth
established in England, as knowing by experience that
they could corrupt the former, and by that means possess
themselves of the most profitable parts of trade.”
On the 1st of April 1651, the Council of State despatched
a letter, “demanding satisfaction for the affront offered to
the English ambassadors in Holland by Prince Palatine
Edward.” 4 On the following day it was ordered, “That
the letters and instructions now read to the Lords Ambas-
sadors in Holland be fair-written, signed, and sent away
this night by an express, and that duplicates be sent to-
morrow by the post.”
Hobbes's Behemoth, p. 287 (Lon- ted Provinces.” (Ibid. Feb. 28, 1653.)
don, 1682). The following minute further shows
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 166. that particular members of the Council
* Ibid. p. 203. of State were, from their personal pre-
* Order Book of the Council of
State, Tuesday, April 1, 1651, MS.
State Paper Office.
* Ibid. April 2, 1651–The following
order shows that Scott performed the
duties now performed by the Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs: “That
Mr. Scott do hold a constant intelli-
gence with the Lords Ambassadors
who are now to go over into the Uni-
eminence, considered as Ministers, or
Secretaries of State.: “That it be re-
ferred to the Committee for Irish and
Scottish Affairs, to consider of the par-
ticulars desired in a letter from Scot-
land, written to Sir Henry Vane, and
in his hands, and thereupon to give
order for the speedy providing.” (Ibid.
April 17, 1651.) By a subsequent mi-
nute of May 8, it appears that this
1651.] INSTRUCTIONS TO THE AMBASSADORS.
117
In these instructions for St. John and Strickland, the
Council of State say:-‘‘Admiral Van Tromp is arrived
at the islands of Scillyes or Sorlings, anciently a part of
the territories belonging to the Commonwealth of England,
with a fleet under his command consisting of ten or fifteen
men-of-war; in some of which are great number of men
and some persons of quality not usual in men-of-war only
designed for sea-service : which said Admiral declined to
have a boat of our fleet to come on board to him ; and does
continue his abode with his said fleet near those islands
and the western parts of England, without discovering his
clear intentions therein, pretending that it is to procure
satisfaction for the injuries done by the garrisons in those
islands, and ships belonging thereunto, unto the ships of
their [the United Provinces'] subjects; but with instruc-
tions, as we are informed, to compel such satisfaction with-
out any limitation of means, either by possessing himself of
those islands or otherwise, and to seize upon all ships
whatsoever going in or coming out from that place, where-
by just cause of jealousy is given to the Parliament. And
that until the intentions of the States-General in this ex-
pedition be clearly made manifest to the Parliament, and
assurance given to them that the said fleet may act
nothing to the prejudice of this Commonwealth in honour
or interest, the instructions and commission given to Van
letter was from the Lord-General
Cromwell. Sir Henry Vane had en-
Irish and Scottish Affairs, as Secretary
of State for War. Sir Henry Vane's
tered the Council-room just before. He
probably then read the letter to the
Council. Thus, while Scott might be
considered as Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, Vane might be con-
sidered, in regard to his connection both
with the Committee of the Admiralty
and Navy, and with the Committee for
name stands first, both in the list of
the Committee for carrying on the Af-
fairs of the Admiralty and in that of
the Committee for the Affairs of Ire-
land and Scotland.--Order Book of the
Council of State, Saturday March 1,
1659, MS. State Paper Office.
118 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [Char. IX
**.
Tromp in reference to the said islands may be recalled, to
avoid all occasions of disputes and differences between the
two States; the Parliament having thought fit to give
order to their fleets not to suffer the said Admiral Tromp,
or any other, to act anything to the prejudice of the State
in honour or interest.” " - +
On the 10th of April the Council of State ordered, “That
it be reported to the Parliament that the Council of State
received letters from the Lords Ambassadors from Holland,
relating to a paper put in by them concerning an affront
offered to them by Edward, the son of the Queen of Bohemia;
and that the Council of State have again by this post re-
ceived letters from the said ambassadors, and some papers,
relating further affronts offered unto them.”” -
It would appear from the following minute that the
Dutch gave a satisfactory account of Tromp's fleet at
Scilly, so that for the year 1651 the war with Holland
was avoided, that war which was to break out with
... such fury in the following year, 1652: “That a letter be
written to Colonel Blake, to enclose him a copy of the
paper of the States of Holland, in answer to a paper of the
ambassadors of England, concerning the going of Wan
Tromp towards Scilly ; and to let him know that he is so to
carry the matter, that the honour of the Commonwealth
may be preserved, and a good correspondence between the
two nations.” ” -
The following minute of the same date confirms what
has been said respecting the disposition of the Kings of
Europe towards the Parliament of England: “That it
“Instructions for the Ambassadors * Order Book of the Council of State,
with the States-General of the United April 10, 1651, MS. State Paper Of-
Provinces.”—Order Book of the Coun- fice. -
cil of State, April 2, 1651, MS. State * Ibid. April 17, 1651.
Paper Office.

1651.] COUNCIL'S VIGILANCE AGAINST INVASION. 119
be referred to the Committee of the Admiralty to inform
themselves concerning the truth of the intelligence given
of the preparation of men and shipping in Sweden; and
thereupon so to appoint the fleet of the Commonwealth,
that prevention may be given to any attempts which may
be made by them upon any parts of this nation to the pre-
judice thereof.” " -
The following minute further shows that some designs
were on foot of effecting a landing in some parts of England,
with a view of making a diversion in favour of the King
of Scots and the Royalists, who had probably by this time
(the end of April 1651) formed the design of their invasion
of England which led to the Battle of Worcester: “That
such of the letters intercepted in Holland as refer to
designs against this Commonwealth be referred to the con-
sideration of the Committee for Examinations; ” “the
Committee of the Admiralty to consider of some fit ships
for those parts designed upon, as shown by the intercepted
Hetters.” ” -
At this particular time the ability and vigilance of the
Council of State were tasked to the utmost. Besides the
threatened invasions from the Continent and from Scot-
land, they had also received intelligence of an intended
diversion in Scotland from Ireland: “That a letter be
written to the Lord-General [Cromwell], to acquaint him
with the propositions made concerning the making of a
diversion in Scotland from Ireland; and that they have
written to the Lord Deputy [Ireton], to hold intelligence
with his Lordship concerning the same; to enclose the copy
of the Council’s letter to the Deputy to him, and to lett [sic,
i.e. leave], the whole business to his Lordship's considera-
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. April 28, 1651, MS. State
State, April 17, 1651. Paper Office.
120 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. IX.
r
=
tion.”! And with regard to the invasion from the Conti-
ment, the Council received intelligence, in the beginning
of June, “of the enemy’s designs to land at or near Yar-
mouth.” ”
On the 11th of April, several papers from the Parlia–
ment's ambassadors in Holland, and two intercepted
letters, were read in the House, upon which the House
passed the following resolutions: “1. That the Parlia-
ment doth approve of what the Ambassadors Extraordinary
to the General Assembly of the States of the United Pro-
vinces have done upon the affronts offered to them.—2.
That the Parliament doth approve of the direction given by
the Council of State, to the said Ambassadors Extraordi-
nary, touching their return.-3. That it be referred to the
Council of State, upon the debate now had in the House
on this report, to give such orders and directions as they
shall think fit, for the honour of this Commonwealth and
safety of the Ambassadors.-4. That the debates of the
House this day, and the votes thereupon, be not made
known to any person : and that the members of the House,
and the officers thereof, be enjoined secrecy therein for 21
days.” This injunction of secrecy would appear to refer
fo intelligence contained in the intercepted letters, and in
the ambassadors’ despatches, respecting some designs to
land foreign forces on the east coast of England, near Yar-
mouth, under the command of the Duke of Lorraine; and
the injunction of secrecy would also appear to have been
continued for a considerable time beyond the 21 days spe-
cified above. For, on the 5th September of this year,
Order Book of the Council of State, Council of State, June 3, 1651.
April 22, 1651. * Commons' Journals, April 11,
* “Intelligence the Council have had 1651; Parl. Hist. Vol. iii. pp. 1363,
of the enemy's designs to land at or 1364,
near Yarmouth.”—Order Book of the
1651.] DUKE OF LORRAINES PROJECTED INVASION. 121
just two days after the Battle of Worcester, there is this
minute entered in the “Order Book of the Council of State:”
“That the injunction of secrecy laid upon the business of
the Duke of Lorraine be taken off.” "
It also appears, from the following minute of 12th
August 1651, that the Council of State had reason to
expect the foreign forces to sail from Dunkirk or Ostend,
and the attempt at invasion to be made at or near
Yarmouth : “That Colonel Popham should send some
ships from the Downs to lie before Dunkirk and Ostend, to
prevent any forces coming out from thence from the Duke
of Lorraine to make any diversion; and should also send
some ships to Yarmouth, to prevent the landing of any in
England.” There are various subsequent minutes to the
same effect.
All these minutes and the resolutions of Parliament,
taken together, afford strong confirmation of the statement
of General Ludlow, and also show that the Council of
State had information of designs of attempting a landing
of foreign forces in England, as well as in Ireland. Lud-
low states that the Council of State had reason to think
that the Dutch had a design to transport some foreign
forces by their fleet to the assistance of the Irish, who were,
says Ludlow (and, as then commanding in Ireland, he
had the best means of knowing), “not only still numerous
in the field, but had also divers places of strength to
retreat to.” Ludlow then goes on to give the account
which has been quoted at the beginning of this volume
of the designs of the Duke of Lorraine, who was a
Order Book of the Council of State, Tuesday, August 12, 1651.
State, Friday, Sept. 5, 1651, MS. * Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 389
State Paper Office. (2nd edition, London, 1721).
* Order Book of the Council of
122 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. IX.
near relation of Henry of Guise, one of the principal
authors of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and also
a relation of the Stuarts. It was within the Lorraine
territory that the conferences were held, among the
chiefs of the “Sacred League,” some 60 years before,
at which it was resolved to require of the last Valois the
immediate extermination of heresy and heretics, and the
formal establishment of the “Holy Inquisition,” in every
province of France. -
Here then was a repetition, in the 17th century, of the
story of some memorable years of the 16th. “It will not
take much time to put down the heretics here,” wrote
Philip II.’s ambassador at Paris on the 7th of June, 1585;
“ nor will it consume much more to conquer England
with the forces of such powerful princes, there being so
many Catholics, too, to assist the invaders.
Majesty, on account of your Netherlands, is not afraid of
putting arms into the hands of the Guise family in France,
there need be less objection to sending one of that house
If your
into England, particularly as you will send forces of your
own into that kingdom, by the reduction of which the
affairs of Flanders will be secured.” The Spaniard adds,
with characteristic modesty, “To effect the pacification of
the Netherlands the sooner, it would be desirable to
conquer England as early as October.”" The difference,
* Letter from Mendoza tophilip II.
from the MS. in the Archives of Siman-
cas, in Motley's History of the United
Netherlands, vol. i. pp. 128, 129. The
Spanish ambassador also insists on the
want of disciplined forces in England
to oppose an invasion. It is remark-
able that so late as the year 1849 a
IFrench vice-admiral, by name Dupetit-
Thouars, gave a similar opinion in
his evidence in the French “Enquête
Parlementaire” of 1849, respecting
the facility of conquering England.
Between Mendoza and Dupetit-Thouars,
however, two men, Blake and Nelson,
had lived, who had made it necessary
for Vice-Admiral Dupetit-Thouars to
assume a landing made. The land-
ing having been effected, Vice-Admi-
ral Dupetit-Thouars assumes that the
1651.] THE ENGLISH AMBASSAIDORS RECALLED. 123
however, between 1585 and 1651 was important. For in
1585 England had at least the Netherlands on her side,
whereas in 1651 she had the Netherlands leagued with
the rest of Europe against her.
But if the tyrants of Lorraine, of France, of Spain,
imagined that they could extinguish in England religious
and civil liberty in a sea of blood, shed by assassins and
not by honourable soldiers, as they had extinguished it in
France, they little knew the spirit of the people they
undertook to subdue and massacre: they little knew that
the arts of Italian falsehood would be no match for such
statesmen as Vane, and the arms of Lorraine, of Spain,
of Holland, no match for such soldiers as Blake and
Cromwell.
When the States of the United Provinces received the
letters of the English Council of State, demanding satis-
faction for the affronts offered to the English ambassadors
in Holland, they remonstrated with the Queen of Bohemia
and the Princess Dowager of Orange, against the be-
haviour of the two princes. They also offered a reward of
200 guilders (£20) for discovery of the other offenders, and
published a proclamation for the punishment of all such
as should offer any violence to the persons or privileges
of ambassadors or agents from foreign Powers. The
smallness of the sum offered looked like an aggravation
of the insult. And such the English Parliament felt it to
be, for they soon after recalled their ambassadors."
The speech which St. John made, or, as Hobbes says,
English would be driven before the in- slight mistake; and that the Par-
vaders like a flock of sheep. However liamentary cuirassiers and pikemen
the case might have been in 1585 were a morsel by no means easy of
and 1849, whoever expected to find digestion.
England an easy conquest in 1651 * Parl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 1365.
would have found he had made a
124 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. IX. .
the “compliment which he gave,” to the Dutch commis-
sioners at taking leave, is a curiosity in diplomacy, and,
as Hobbes observes, worth hearing. “My lords,” said
St. John, “you have an eye upon the event of the affairs
of Scotland, and therefore do refuse the friendship we have
offered. Now, I can assure you that many in the Parlia-
ment were of opinion, that we should not have sent any
ambassadors to you before they had put an end to the
contest between themselves and that King; and then
expected your ambassadors to us. I now perceive our
error, and that those gentlemen were in the right. In a
short time you shall see that business ended; and then
you will come to us, and seek what we have freely offered,
when it shall perplex you that you have refused our prof-
fer.” As Hobbes observes after quoting these words, St.
John guessed well, as we shall see in subsequent clapters.
On the 2nd of July, 1651, the ambassadors took their
seats in the House, when the Lord Chief Justice St. John,
Mr. Strickland standing by him, gave an account of their
negotiation, beginning with the particulars of their recep-
tion at the Hague, and relating the several occurrences
which passed between them and the Assembly of the
States; and presenting the several papers delivered in on
either side, in the business of the Treaty, and the letters
re-credential from the said Assembly, in French, directed
thus: “Au Parlement de la République d’Angleterre.”
These several papers having been read, it was resolved,
“That the Parliament doth approve of all the proceedings
of the Lords Ambassadors in this negotiation, and that
they have the thanks of the House for their great and
* This parting speech of St. John is and in Heath’s “Chronicle of the Civil
given, in almost the same words, in Wars,” p. 287.
Hobbes's “Behemoth,” pp. 285, 286;
1651.] AMBASSAT)ORS THANKED BY PARLIAMENT, 125
faithful services therein; ” which the Speaker gave them
accordingly. The same compliment was also paid to the
gentlemen that attended them abroad, for their services
to the Parliament, and the respect shown to their ambas-
sadors."
* Parl. Hist, vol. iii. p. 1367.
º
CHAPTER X.
IT is a remarkable fact, that among the members of the
Council of State and of the Parliament, at the time when
the Government called itself the Government of the Com-
monwealth of England, were some peers, who or whose
fathers had been the especial favourites of the first of the
Stuart kings who reigned in England. William Cecil,
Earl of Salisbury, the son of Robert Cecil, who had been
created Earl of Salisbury, by King James, in 1605, and
Philip Herbert, created Earl of Montgomery by King
James, also in 1605, and who succeeded his brother as
Earl of Pembroke in 1630, were both members of the Rump,
and also members of the first Council of State. Among the
peers who sat as members of the Rump, was Edward
Howard, a younger son of Thomas Howard, who had been
created Earl of Suffolk, by King James, in 1603. This
Thomas Howard—who had, in the early part of King
James's reign, filled the post of Lord Chamberlain,
and upon the death of the Earl of Salisbury had been
made Lord High Treasurer—was the father of Lady
Frances Howard, known, among other things, for poisoning
Sir Thomas Overbury; and also of Edward Howard, created
by King Charles, in 1628, Baron Howard of Escrick,
whose son, also Lord Howard of Escrick, is known, among
other things, as the single witness against Algernon
Sydney, who was condemned and executed, to borrow the
1651.] CHARGE OF BRIBERY AGAINST LORD HOWARD. 127
words of Evelyn, “on the single witness of that monster
of a man, Lord Howard of Escrick, and some sheets of
paper taken in Mr. Sydney’s study.” In the early part
of this year (1651), a complaint had been exhibited in
Parliament against this Edward, Lord Howard of Escrick,
now a member of the House of Commons for the city of
Carlisle. The witnesses against him had been examined
strictly by a Committee of the House appointed for that
purpose. The particulars of the charge are not given in
the Journals of the House; but Ludlow, in his Memoirs,
gives the following account of it :—
“Before I left the Parliament” [to go to Ireland],
“some difference happening between the Countess of Rut-
land and the Lord Howard of Escrick, Colonel Gell, who
was a great servant of the Countess, informed Major-
General Harrison, that the Lord Edward Howard, being a
Member of Parliament and one of the Committee at
Haberdashers’ Hall, had taken divers bribes for the ex-
cusing delinquents from sequestration, and easing them
in their compositions; and that, in particular, he had
received a diamond hatband, valued at £800, from one Mr.
Compton of Sussex, concerning which he could not prevail
with any to inform the Parliament. Major-General Harri-
son, being a man of severe principles, and zealous for justice,
especially against such as betrayed the public trust re-
posed in them, assured him, that if he could satisfy him
that the fact was as he affirmed, he would not fail to inform
the Parliament of it: and upon satisfaction received from
the Colonel touching that matter, said in Parliament, ‘That
! It would seem the Earl of Salis- crick, respecting which marriage, see
bury, mentioned above as a member of the despatches of La Boderie, the
the first Council of State, had married French ambassador at the Court of
a sister of this Lord Howard of Es- James (tom. iv. p. 100).
128 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
though the honour of every member was dear to him, and
of that gentleman in particular (naming the Lord Howard),
because he had so openly owned the interest of the Com-
monwealth as to decline his peerage, and sit upon the
foot of his election by the people; yet he loved justice
before all other things, looking upon it to be the honour
of the Parliament and the image of God upon them; that
therefore he durst not refuse to lay this matter before them,
though he was very desirous that the said Lord might
clear himself of the accusation.” The Parliament, having
received this information, referred the consideration of the
matter to a committee, where it was fully examined; and,
notwithstanding all the art of counsel learned in the law,
and all the friends the Lord Howard could make, so just
and equitable a spirit then governed, that the Committee
represented the matter to the Parliament as they found it
to be.”" It was therefore resolved by the House: “That
upon consideration of the several charges against Edward,
Lord Howard of Escrick, and the proofs reported, and his
answer and defence thereupon, the Parliament doth, upon
the whole matter, declare and adjudge him guilty of
bribery: that the said Edward Lord Howard be discharged
from being a member of this Parliament, and for ever dis-
abled to sit in any Parliament, and from bearing any
office or place of trust in this Commonwealth : that he be
fined £10,000; committed to the Tower during the plea-
sure of the Parliament ; and that he do attend at the bar
of the House, and, upon his knee there, receive this judg-
ment.” The Lord Howard was released, from his im-
prisonment in the Tower, on the 6th of August following:
and on the 5th of April, 1653, the fine of £10,000 imposed
| Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 334, * Commons' Journals, June 25,
335 (2nd edition, London, 1721). 1651.
1651.) WISCOUNT LISLE AND ALGERNON SYDNEY. 129
upon him was ordered to be discharged." His son, when
thirty years after he brought Algernon Sydney to the scaf-
fold, might think that he then paid back upon the Repub-
lican party the humiliation which on this occasion they had
inflicted on his father. The history of this family would be
an instructive illustration of the sort of virtues which
recommended men to the favour of the Stuarts, and of the
depth of infamy to which the Stuarts reduced nobility in
England.
The fact of this Lord Howard of Escrick's sitting as a
member of this assembly may be explained easily enough,
on the ground that such men as he are ever ready to side
with that party, whatever its principles may be, which is
the strongest for the time being. But there is a far
deeper significance in the fact that Philip Earl of Pem-
broke, and Philip Lord Wiscount Lisle, the eldest son of
the Earl of Leicester, were members of this Parliament,
and also of the Council of State; and that Algernon Sydney,
another son of the Earl of Leicester, was a member of the
Barliament, and an officer of the army of the Parliament,
and also a member of the last Council of State elected in
November 1652. These two brothers were related by
blood to the Earl of Pembroke, whose mother was the
sister of Sir Philip Sydney, and also of Robert Sydney,
their grandfather, created Wiscount Lisle in 1605, and
Earl of Leicester in 1618, by James I. No one, therefore,
had better means, than they had, of knowing what was
the price of King James's honours. Whether all the
wickedness of the Court of the Stuart was known to all
those who called themselves Cavaliers, and fought for the
Stuarts like Falkland, or wrote for them like Hyde, I can-
not say. If they did not know for what the Earl of
* Parl. Hist, vol. iii. pp. 1366, 1367.
VOI,. II. K
130 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
f
Gowrie and his brother had been murdered, they could
hardly miss knowing why the murderers of Sir Thomas
Overbury escaped punishment, and retired with a pension
of £4,000 a year. However that might be, this Earl of
Pembroke knew the wickedness of that Court too well;
and Wiscount Lisle knew enough of it to take an active
part in the business of the Council of State, for his name
appears often in the MS. minutes, showing that his attend-
ance was as regular as that of most of the members.
But the case of Lord Lisle's brother, Algernon Sydney, is
still more significant.
Algernon Sydney was not a member of the Council of
State till November 1652. He was again elected a member
of the Council of State, on the restoration of the Long
Barliament, in 1659. But in 1646 he was returned Member
for Cardiff; and in 1647 he received the thanks of the
House of Commons for his services in Ireland, and was
appointed Governor of Dover. In April 1645 Fairfax had
raised him to the rank of Colonel, and had given him a
regiment. On the 2nd of July 1650, there is this minute in
the “Order Book of the Council of State”:—“That Colonel
Algernon Sydney be desired to repair down to Dover
Castle and take care of the place, the Council being
informed that the enemy have some design upon the
place.”
Of Algernon Sydney’s qualities as a soldier, there could
not be a stronger testimonial than this—that when
Cromwell, after his return from Ireland in 1650, proposed
to Ludlow that “ some person of reputation and known
fidelity might be sent over to command the horse in
Ireland, and to assist Major-General Ireton in the public
* Order Book of the Council of State, July 2, 1650, MS. State Paper
Office. - T.
1651.] CHARACTER OF ALGERNON SYDNEY. 131
service,” and desired Ludlow to propose one whom he
thought sufficiently qualified for that station, Ludlow told
him that, in his opinion, “a fitter man could not be found
than Colonel Algernon Sydney;” and the only exception
Cromwell made against him was “ his relation to some
who were in the King’s interest.”
The character of Algernon Sydney has been a favourite
theme with writers, great and small; and, as is usual, the
small writers have been harder upon him than the great.
For it is a source of wonderful self-complacency to a small
man to pass judgment, from an imaginary judgment-seat,
on what he terms the narrow-minded obstinacy, the utter
impracticability, the infatuated helplessness, of a ship-
wrecked faction. The man fancies that, by such lofty
denunciations, he establishes his own title to vast prac-
tical ability. But sometimes he is undeceived before he
dies. Algernon Sydney, in one of his letters to his father,
seems to forebode this part of his sad fate, when he
says: “I wander as a vagabond through the world, forsaken
of my friends, poor, and known only to be a broken
limb of a shipwrecked faction.” In another letter to
his father, first published by Mr. Blencowe in 1825,
from the Original in Mr. Lambard’s collection, Algernon
Sydney pleads, as it were by a voice from the grave,
against Jeffreys, who pronounced upon him the judg-
ment of death,” as well as against those who, after death,
pronounced him to be a narrow-minded, opinionative,
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 320
(2nd edition, London, 1721).
* At Algernon Sydney's trial, Finch,
the Solicitor-General, a far more adroit
legal sophist than Prideaux, the
Attorney-General at John Lilburne's
trial, maintained that one witness to
one fact, and another witness to another
fact, were the two witnesses required
by law. It is remarkable that Sydney
was destroyed by the very same fal-
sification of law by which the Rump,
of which he had been a member, had
attempted, though in vain, to destroy
John Lilburne.
K
2
132 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. |CHAP. X.
fanatical egotist. Let us hear Algernon Sydney's defence
of himself.
He thus writes to his father from Hamburg, August
30, 1660: “Sir John Temple sends me word, your Lord-
ship is very intent upon finding a way of bringing me into
England, in such a condition as I may live there quietly
and well. I acknowledge your Lordship's favour, and will
make the best return for it I can ; but I desire you to lay
that out of your thoughts; it is a design never to be ac-
complished. I find so much by the management of things
at home, that it is impossible for me to be quiet one day,
unless I would do those things, the remembrance of which
would never leave me one quiet or contented moment
whilst I live. I know myself to be in a condition that, for
all circumstances, is as ill as outward things can make it.
This is my only consolation, that when I call to remem-
brance, as exactly as I can, all my actions relating to our
civil distempers, I cannot find one that I look upon as a
breach of the rules of justice or honour. This is my
strength, and, I thank God, by this I enjoy very serene
thoughts. If I lose this, by vile and unworthy submis-
sions, acknowledgment of errors, asking of pardon, or the
like, I shall from that moment be the miserablest man
alive, and the scorn of all men. I know the titles that are
given me, of fierce, violent, seditious, mutinous, turbulent,
and many others of the like nature; but God, that gives
me inward peace in my outward troubles, doth know that
I do in my heart choose an innocent quiet retirement,
before any place unto which I could hope to raise myself
by those actions which they condemn. If I could write
and talk like Colonel Hutchinson, or Sir Gilbert Pickering,
I believe I might be quiet; contempt might procure my
safety; but I had rather be a vagabond all my life, than
1651.] ALGERNON SYDNEY. 133
buy my being in my own country at so dear a rate : and
if I could have bowed myself according to my interest,
perhaps I was not so stupid as not to know the ways of
settling my affairs at home, or making a good provision
for staying abroad, as well as others, and did not want
credit to attain unto it; but I have been these many years
outstripped by those that were below me, whilst I stopped
at those things that they easily leaped over. What shall
I say? It hath been my fortune from my youth, and will
be so to my grave, by which my designs in the world will
perpetually miscarry. But I know people will say, I strain
at gnats, and swallow camels; that it is a strange con-
science, that lets a man run violently on, till he is deep in
civil blood, and then stays at a few words and compliments;
that can earnestly endeavour to extirpate a long-established
monarchy, and then cannot be brought to see his error,
and be persuaded to set one finger towards the setting
together the broken pieces of it. It will be thought a
strange extravagance for One, that esteemed it no dis-
honour to make himself equal to a great many mean
people, and below some of them, to make war upon the
King; and is ashamed to submit unto the King, now he is
encompassed with all the nobles of the land, and in the
height of his glory, so that none are so happy as those
that can first cast themselves at his feet. I have enough
to answer all this in my own mind; I cannot help it if I
judge amiss; I did not make myself, nor can I correct the
defects of my own creation. I walk in the light God hath
given me; if it be dim or uncertain, I must bear the
penalty of my errors. I hope to do it with patience, and
that no burden shall be very grievous to me, except sin
and shame. God keep me from those evils, and, in all
things else, dispose of me according to his pleasure I
134 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X
have troubled your Lordship very long, but it is that I
might ease you of cares that would be more tedious, and
as unfruitful. I do not know whither the course of my for-
tune doth lead me, probably never to return to see your
Lordship or my own country again. However, if I have
offended your Lordship, transported by folly or the violence
of my nature (I have nothing else that needs your forgive-
ness), I beseech you to pardon it; and let me have your
favour and blessing along with me. If I live to return, I
will endeavour to deserve it by my services; if not, I can
make no return but my prayers for you, which shall
never be omitted by your Lordship's
ALGERNON SYDNEY.”
In another of his letters to his father, first published by
Mr. Blencowe in 1825 from Mr. Lambard’s collection, and
dated Venice, October 12, 1660, Algernon Sydney gives the
following account of his conduct with regard to the King’s
trial, which shows that he had clearer notions on the ille-
gality of “High Courts of Justice” than either Cromwell
or Bradshaw. He says:–“The truth of what passed I do
very well remember. I was at Penshurst, when the Act
for the trial passed; and coming up to town I heard
my name was put in, and that those that were nominated
for judges were then in the Painted Chamber. I presently
went thither, heard the Act read, and found my own name
with others. A debate was raised how they should pro-
ceed upon it ; and after having been some time silent, to
hear what those would say who had the directing of that
business, I did positively oppose Cromwell, Bradshaw, and
others, who would have the trial to go on, and drawing rea-
Sydney Papers, pp. 195–198, edited by R. W. Blencowe (London,
1825). * ,
1651.] 135
sons from these two points:—First, the King could be tried
by no court; secondly, that no man could be tried by that
court. This being alleged in vain, and Cromwell using
these formal words, “I tell you, we will cut off his head
with the crown upon it,' I replied: “You may take your
own course, I cannot stop you, but I will keep myself
clean from having any hand in this business;' and imme-
diately went out of the room, and never returned." This
is all that passed publicly, or that can with truth be re-
corded, or taken notice of. I had an intention, which is
not very fit for a letter.”
This last sentence has given rise to some discussion.
Sir James Mackintosh, in a note” printed at the end of
Mr. Blencowe's volume, expresses an opinion that the
intention to which Sydney alludes, was to procure a con-
currence of both Houses of Parliament in the deposition
of the King. The Lords had passed an ordinance, making
it High Treason in future for a King of England to levy
war against the Parliament, a measure which of itself
declared the judicial proceedings against the King illegal.
“Sydney, we know from a letter to his father,” says the
note of Sir James Mackintosh, “approved that ordinance,
and blamed the resolutions of the Commons which were
ALGERNON SYDNEY.
* The Earl of Leicester's Journal
agrees with this account: “My two
sons, Philip and Algernon, came unex-
pectedly to Penshurst, Monday 22nd,
and stayed there till Monday, 29th Jan-
uary, so as neither of them were at the
condemnation of the King ; nor was
Philip at any time at the High Court,
though a commissioner; but Algernon
(a commissioner also) was there some-
times, in the Painted Chamber, but
Inever in Westminster Hall.”—Journal
of the Earl of Leicester, p. 54, in Syd-
ney Papers.
* Sydney Papers, edited by R. W.
Blencowe (London, 1825), p. 237.
* In that note Sir J. Mackintosh
says, “what this intention was it is no
longer possible to ascertain; but we
may with tolerable certainty affirm
that it was one which he wished not
to be known to the Government of
Charles II., who were pretty sure to
read his letter, and yet was willing to
communicate to his father in con-
versation.”
136 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
= .
founded on other principles. The design of deposition
seems perfectly reconcileable with the known opinion of
Sydney and his connexions at the moment.” Sydney, in
the letter just quoted, also says that his opposition to the
trial, and to the subscription of a paper declaring appro-
bation of the order for the King's execution, “had so ill
effects as to my particular concernments, as to make
Cromwell, Bradshaw, Harrison, Lord Grey, and others
my enemies, who did from that time continually oppose
me.” In regard to the supposition that the words of
Sydney’s letter referred to private assassination, Sir James
Mackintosh says:–“Even the enemies of Sydney’s memory
cannot surely think it probable that a man of so frank and
fearless a character should have preferred expedients which
had no other recommendation than their tendency to pro-
vide for the personal safety of the actors. But it is alto-
gether incredible that, if he had been a partisan of secret
regicide, he should have needlessly alluded to such a
disposition, in a letter written to supply his father with
every fair means of procuring his secure admission into
England.” " #:
In another letter beginning “Sir," and without date or
address, Algernon Sydney says:—“I confess we are
naturally inclined to delight in our own country, and I
have a particular love to mine ; I hope I have given some
testimony of it. I think that being exiled from it is a
great evil, and would redeem myself from it with the loss
of a great deal of my blood. But when that country of
mine is now like to be made a stage of injury, the liberty
which we hoped to establish oppressed; the Parliament
and army corrupted, the people enslaved; all things ven-
dible, no man safe, but by such evil and infamous means
| Sydney Papers by Blencowe, note I. pp. 281–284, London, 1825.
1651.] ALGERNON SYDNEY. 137
*_)
as flattery and bribery; what joy can I have in my own
country in this condition 9 Shall I renounce all my old
principles, learn the vile court arts, and make my peace by
bribing some of them? Better is a life among strangers,
than in my own country on such conditions. * * * Let
them please themselves with making the King glorious,
who think that a whole people may justly be sacrificed for
the interest and pleasure of one, and a few of his followers.
Nevertheless, perhaps they may find their King’s glory is
their shame, his plenty the people’s misery.”
Now let it be observed that in all this Algernon Sydney
—one of that body of statesmen whom a modern writer has
thought fit to term “a small faction of fanatical egotists,
more important from their passionate activity than from
their talents,”—was right, and they who again brought in
the Stuarts upon the English nation were wrong, asthe event
fully proved, when, after twenty-eight years of crimes and
follies, those Stuarts were expelled for ever. In estimating
the conduct of Sydney, it must also be remembered that his
experience had not furnished him with any remedy for the
evils of which he had seen and heard so much, and which
seemed inherent in monarchical government, except a re-
public, Or, at any rate, some form of government like that
which had been established after the death of Charles.
For he could hardly be expected to know that a remedy
might be found such as the Government established in
England after the final expulsion of the Stuarts. He had
seen the evils of the monarchical government brought very
near to him; for Leicester, the unworthy favourite of Eliza-
beth, was as bad a man, and as incapable a minister and
general, as Buckingham, the unworthy favourite of James
| Sydney Papers, pp. 199-201, edited by R. W. Blencowe (London,
1825). r
138 CoMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X. .
and Charles. It so happened that Sydney was peculiarly
situated for observing both the old and the new nobility.
The Sydneys belonged to the new nobility. But Algernon
Sydney was descended from Hotspur and the old warrior
nobility, through his mother, the Lady Dorothy Percy,
eldest daughter of the Earl of Northumberland; and he
was also descended from the new or court-lackey nobility,
his great-grandmother being the sister of Robert Dudley,
the Earl of Leicester of infamous memory. Moreover, his
aunt, the Lady Lucy Percy, having been married to one of
James’s favourites, was the Countess of Carlisle, a woman
celebrated for her beauty, but whose reputation was not
likely to meet with the approbation of Algernon Sydney,
any more than it would have been likely to meet with the
approbation of her ancestor, Hotspur—a proud rough man,
who hated the “vile court arts,” which Algernon Sydney,
a proud rough man also, hated. Further, the two nephews
of Sir Philip Sydney, the Earl of Pembroke and his brother
Philip Herbert, had been favourites at James's Court; and
of that Court it may be said that its favour was even worse
than its enmity, and that none ever escaped with honour
from its deadly embrace. Now, when all this is taken into
account, and when it is remembered that Algernon Sydney
was a thoughtful and observing as well as a proud and
conscientious man, one can understand that, as he could
see no other remedy but a republic for those intolerable
evils of a monarchical government, he was willing to take
help wherever he could get it—to take help even from a
despot like Louis XIV. And if we are bound to consider
the papers of Barillon as sufficient evidence that 500
guineas were paid to Algernon Sydney on the part of
Louis XIV., the only explanation of such a circumstance,
which can in the least reconcile it with Sydney’s character,
1651.] CROMWELL’S ILLNESS IN SCOTLAND. 139
is that he considered the situation of affairs so desperate
as to warrant a desperate remedy ; as his cotemporary,
Thomas Hobbes, defended his retaining a friend or two at
court, to protect him, if occasion should require, by saying,
“If I were cast into a deep pit, and the Devil should put
down his cloven foot, I would take hold of it to be drawn
out by it.”
The folly of the attempt to represent that assembly of
“the greatest geniuses for government the world ever saw
embarked together in one common cause,” as “a small
faction of fanatical egotists, more important from their
passionate activity than from their talents,” will be made
abundantly manifest in the present chapter, from the mi-
nutes of their proceedings which happily exist.
During the winter of 1654, which Cromwell passed
in Scotland, he had an attack of illness, which would seem
to have been very severe. In a letter to the President of
the Council of State, dated Edinburgh, March 24, 1650%,
he says—“I thought I should have died of this fit of
sickness; but the Lord seemeth to dispose otherwise.”
And in May, Cromwell sent word that the air of Scotland
did not agree with him, and desired to remove himself to
some part of England for the restoration of his health.
Leave was granted to him ; but he appears to have reco-
vered his health so much as not to need to make use of it.
It is extremely difficult to get at the truth respecting
powerful men—I mean men powerful from their position.
The truth, if likely to be distasteful to them, cannot be
published during their lifetime, or even, in many cases, till
long after their death. Thus some persons who attempted
to publish a version of what James I. called the Gowrie
Conspiracy, different from King James's version, were
punished with torture and death. And even after James's
140
COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
accession to the throne of England, any expression of dis-
sent from the doctrine of the royal wisdom and virtue
brought ruin and death on the unhappy dissenter." The
common accounts say that Cromwell's illness on this occa-
sion was an attack of ague. But Aubrey, in his account of
Jonathan Godard, M.D., tells the following story, which
may be taken for whatever it is worth : “He [Godard]
was one of the College of Physicians in London; warden
of Merton College, Oxon; physician to Oliver Cromwell,
Protector; went with him into Ireland. Qu. if not sent
to him into Scotland, when he was so dangerously ill there
of a kind of calenture or high fever, which made him mad,
that he pistolled one or two of his commanders that came
to visit him in his rage.”
The Scottish Parliament, which after the Battle of
Dunbar had retired beyond the Forth, still maintained a
show of decided opposition to those whom they called
the English sectaries. The moderate Presbyterians, who
desired monarchical government, resolved on the coronation
of Charles, with a view of conciliating him, having been
alarmed by a proceeding of his called the Start, the nature
May 5, 1619. “Relation of the a college in one of the Universities; and
Execution of Williams, a Counsellor at
Law, as a Traitor, for writing a libelling
Book against the King, called ‘Ba-
laam’s Ass.’”—MS. State Paper Office.
* Aubrey's Letters and Lives, vol.
ii. pp. 357, 358 (London, 1813).--Au-
brey was right as to Dr. Godard,
as appears from the following mi-
nutes:– “That Dr. Goddard shall have
the sum of £100 given unto him for his
care and pains with the Lord-General
in his sickness. That Dr. Goddard be
recommended to the Committee for the
Universities, to be made master of
Sir H. Vane is desired to acquaint
them that the Council have, in con-
sideration hereof, given him a smaller
sum than otherwise they would have
done, for his care and pains with the
Lord-General in his sickness.” (Order
Book of the Council of State, June 13, .
1651, MS. State Paper Office.) It
appears from a minute of May 23,
1651, that the Council also despatched
two other physicians, Dr. Wright and
Dr. Bates, “to give his Lordship advice
for the recovery of his health.”—Ibid,
May 23, 1651.
1561.] A NATURAL AND AN ARTIFICIAL ARISTOCRACY. 141
of which was not fully known. The ceremony of the coro-
nation was performed at Scone, on the 1st of January 165?
with such solemnities as the circumstances of the times
admitted. Charles, in royal robes, walked in procession from
the hall of the palace to the church; the spurs, sword of
state, sceptre, and crown being carried before him by the
principal nobility. The crown was carried and placed on
the head of Charles by the Marquis of Argyle, who was
beheaded immediately after the Restoration in 1660, and
said upon the scaffold, “I placed the crown upon the
Ring’s head, and in reward he brings mine to the block.”
This coronation spectacle, at this particular time,
is well fitted to give rise to some grave reflections. We
have here two aristocracies in presence of each other
—a natural and an artificial aristocracy, or, employing
the words in their strict meaning, an aristocracy and an
oligarchy. The natural aristocracy consists of an army
composed of the best soldiers, commanded by the best
officers that the world had ever seen—“an army to which,”
as Clarendon has truly and eloquently said, “victory was
entailed, and which, humanly speaking, could hardly fail
of conquest whithersoever it should be led ; an army whose
order and discipline, whose sobriety and manners," whose
courage and success, have made it famous and terrible .
over the world.” But then, says Mr. Denzil Holles, all
of these men, from the General to the meanest centinel,
were not able to make £1,000 a year lands; most of the
* See the testimony of Baillie contrast with some other “sojours,”
(Memoir, p. 63), as to Cromwell's in times that might be thought more
“sojours doing less displeasure at civilized.—See Wellington's Despatches
Glasgow, nor [than] if they had been (particularly Gurwood's Selections), p.
at London, though Mr. Zacharie Boyd 375, No. 426; p. 449, No. 507; p. 919,
railled on them all to their very No. 1013.
faces in the High Church"—a strong
142 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
colonels and officers being mean tradesmen, brewers,
tailors, goldsmiths, shoemakers, and the like—“a notable
dunghill,” adds this son of one of James I.’s notable peers,
“if one would rake into it to find out their several pedi-
grees.” " s
Nevertheless, if it be true, as nowadays some persons
are presumptuous enough to think, that men's deeds are
their best pedigrees, such persons might be disposed to say
that this army of the Parliament of England constituted a
real aristocracy, while the coronation procession, with all
its symbolical paraphernalia, was but a phantom. If this
heraldic aristocracy dreamt that war was an art the know-
ledge of which was their birthright, and which the herd
of burghers and mechanics could never learn, they were
suddenly startled from this dream by the trumpet-blast of
an enemy more terrible than any they had ever encountered
through all the dark centuries of their reign upon earth;
though that enemy’s ranks were, in part, composed of
“ mean mechanics,” and in part officered by “mean
tradesmen,”—by men who, when they had done their work
of war, returned to their former peaceful and industrious
occupations, only noticeable thereafter by their superior
skill in their various trades, and their superior sobriety,
... honesty, and good conduct.
The Royalist writers, who strive to make it appear that
their King was not only a gallant soldier but a prudent
commander—though they have never been able to show,
upon any good evidence, that he displayed even the hum-
blest private soldier's virtue of steadiness and personal
courage under an enemy’s fire, or indeed that he was
ever under an enemy’s fire at all on any one occasion—
* Holles's Memoirs, p. 149.
1651.] POSITION OF THE SCOTTISH ARMY. 143
inform us that after his coronation the King assumed
the command of the Scottish army in person, and took
up a position to the south of Stirling, having in his
front the River Carron. This particular tract of country
had witnessed some of the most desperate struggles for
the independence of Scotland, when the Scots fought
under leaders very different from this Stuart king. On
the banks of the Carron had been fought the bloody Battle
of Falkirk, in which Wallace had been defeated, in conse-
quence, partly at least, of the treacherous defection, during
the battle, of some of the Scottish nobility with their
retainers. On the banks of the Bannock had been fought
the still bloodier Battle of Bannockburn, in which Robert
Bruce had given England the greatest overthrow recorded
in her annals. The strong position now taken up by the
Scottish army was no doubt the work, not of the King—
who never showed a genius for war or anything else (ac-
cording to the authority of his friend the Duke of Buck-
ingham, who ought to have known his gifts), “but ducks,
loitering, and loose women,” —but of David Leslie, who
still acted as Lieutenant-General; though his prudence
and military skill were rendered of small avail under the
control of this “dull blockhead,” as Buckingham calls
him, as they had been baffled before by the incapacity and
folly of the Scottish oligarchy.
“Nay, he could sail a yacht, both There's not a thing the will of man
nigh and large, can name,
Rnew how to trim a boat, and steer a In which this ugly perjur’d rogue de-
barge : lights,
Could say his compass, to the nation's But ducks and loit’ring,” # * *
joy, — The Cabin Boy, by George Williers.
And swear as well as any cabin-boy. Charles was learned in the mechanism
But not one lesson of the ruling art of ships, but his knowledge in them
Could this dull blockhead ever get by and their uses did not extend beyond
heart; - that of a child in some huge new toys.
Look over all the universal frame,
144 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X
Here, as when, before the Battle of Dunbar, the Scots
occupied a strong entrenched position between Edinburgh
and Leith, Cromwell could neither with prudence attack
them in their lines, nor find means of inducing them to
hazard a battle, unless at a great disadvantage to himself.
Now, as in the preceding summer, the Scottish army re-
mained in their fastnesses, carefully and pertinaciously
avoiding an engagement, though Cromwell continued to
use his utmost efforts to provoke them to it. Here, again,
the generalship of David Leslie is for the last time mani-
fest. Cromwell himself pays a high compliment to Leslie’s
skill in taking up strong positions. “The enemy,” he
says, “is at his old lock, and lieth in and near Stirling,
where we cannot come to fight him except he please, or
we go upon too manifest hazards: he having very strongly
laid himself, and having a very good advantage there.
Whither we hear he hath lately gotten great provisions of
meal, and reinforcements of his strength out of the north.
under Marquis Huntly. It is our business still to wait
upon God, to show us our way how to deal with this subtle
enemy; which I hope He will.”
When the armies had faced each other for more than a
month, Cromwell despatched Lambert into Fife, to turn
the left flank of the Scottish army, and intercept their .
supplies. Lambert attacked a detachment of the Scots,
commanded by Holborne and Brown, and totally defeated
them.” Cromwell also proceeded with his army to Perth,
which was surrendered after one day's siege.” These
Cromwell to the Speaker, Linlith- xix. pp. 494, 495; Cromwelliana, p.
gow, July 26, 1651, printed in Mr. 106.
Carlyle's Cromwell, from the Tanner * Cromwell to the Speaker, August
MSS. - 4, 1651; Balfour, vol. iv. pp. 313, 314;
* Parl. Hist, vol. iii. p. 1369; Lord Leicester's Journal, p. 110, in
Cromwell to the Speaker, Linlithgow, Sydney Papers, edited by R. W. Blem-
July 21, 1651, in Old Parl. Hist, vol. cowe (London, 1825).
1651.] MISSTATEMENTS OF MERS. HUTCHINSON. 145
operations speedily had the effect which Cromwell intend-
ed; for on the 31st of July the Scottish army broke up
their camp near Stirling, and moved to the south-westward
by rapid marches."
Mrs. Hutchinson represents the Council of State as
very much surprised at hearing that the King of Scots
was passed by Cromwell, and was marching southward;
and as not only very much surprised, but very much
frightened and disturbed in their counsels, till Colonel
Hutchinson encouraged and put heart into them, “as
they were One day in a private council ragiºg and
crying out on Cromwell’s miscarriages.””
Modern writers,
in the weight they have attached to this statement, have
overlooked the fact, that Colonel Hutchinson was not at
that time a member of the Council of State, as I will show
presently. But I will first say, in reference to Mrs. Hutch-
inson’s statement respecting the very great surprise of the
Council of State at hearing of the King of Scots’ march
southward—that, so long before as the 14th of January of
this year, several extracts of letters from Cromwell and
Lambert to the Council of State, dated from Edinburgh the
4th and 8th of that month, intimating a design of the
Scots to attempt an invasion of England, had been read in
the House.” So that the idea of the invasion of England
would appear to have been entertained by the Scottish
leaders for some time, though the fact of Cromwell’s having
turned their position probably hastened the execution of
the project.
In reference to another statement of Mrs. Hutchinson,
that the Council of State “scarce had any account of
* Cromwell to the Speaker, Leith, * Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson,
August 4, 1651 ; Lord Leicester's p. 356, Bohn's edition, London, 1854.
Journal, p. 110. * Parl. Hist, vol. iii. p. 1362.
WOL. II. L
146 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
Cromwell, or of his intention, or how the error came about
to suffer the enemy to enter England, where there was no
army to encounter him,” it is fair to hear Cromwell's ac-
count of the matter. “This is our comfort,” he says,
“ that in simplicity of heart, as towards God, we have done
to the best of our judgments; knowing that if some issue
were not put to this business, it would occasion another
winter's war, to the ruin of your soldiery, for whom the
Scots are too hard, in respect of enduring the winter diffi-
culties of this country, and to the endless expense of the
treasure of England in prosecuting this war. It may be
supposed we might have kept the enemy from this by inter-
posing between him and England, which truly I believe we
might; but how to remove him out of this place without
doing what we have done, unless we had had a command-
ing army on both sides of the River of Forth, is not clear to
us, or how to answer the inconveniences afore-mentioned
we understand not.””
In the preceding volume I have given an account of the
election of the first and also of the second Council of
State. As the time drew near for the election of a Council
of State for the third time—namely, for the year 1651, the
third year of the new Government called the Common-
wealth—an opinion manifested itself in the Parliament, that
a different principle should be adopted from that on which
the election had been made in the preceding year, when
all the members of the first Council of State were re-elected
except three and two, who had died, so that only five new
members were chosen. Accordingly, on the 5th of Feb-
ruary 165%, the Parliament decided that the Council of
* Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson * Cromwell to the Speaker, Leith, .
p. 356. August 4, 1651.
1651.] ELECTION OF THE NEW COUNCIL OF STATE. 147
State for the ensuing year should consist of 41 persons as
before, but that only 21 of those who were now of the
Council should be allowed to be re-elected." An inatten-
tion to this important fact has led some writers, generally
accurate and careful, into erroneous conclusions. Thus
Mr. Brodie says, in reference to some remarks of Mrs.
Hutchinson on the Council of State about the time of the
Battle of Worcester, “her husband, though a member of
the Council, appears to have been absent on employment.”
The fact, however, is that Colonel Hutchinson was a mem-
ber of the Council of State for the first two years, but not
afterwards. Consequently, he was not a member at the
time of the Battle of Worcester; and this explains Mrs.
Hutchinson’s expression, “private council.” With her
usual exorbitant self-assertion, she charges everybody but
her husband, and one or two other persons whom she ho-
noured with her approbation, with cowardice and folly; and
attributes all the vigour and energy which the Council of
State displayed on that occasion, to the magical influence
exercised on them by Colonel Hutchinson “in a private
council.” As Mrs. Hutchinson’s book has obtained far
greater authority on this important period of English
History than it deserves—for her account of this and many
other matters is very untrustworthy, and written with all
the conceit of knowledge without the reality—I will tran-
scribe here what she says on this point, that the reader may
have an opportunity of comparing it with the record of the
proceedings of the Council of State, preserved in their own
minutes:— º
“The army being small, there was a necessity for
* Commons' Journals, February 5, * History of the British Empire,
165?. vol. iv. p. 305, note.
L 2
148 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. (CHAP. X
recruits; and the Council of State, soliciting all the Parlia-
ment men that had interest to improve it in this exigence
of time, gave Colonel Hutchinson a commission for a regi-
ment of horse. He immediately got up three troops, well
armed and mounted, of his own old soldiers, that thirsted
to be again employed under him, and was preparing the
rest of the regiment to bring them up himself; when he
was informed, that as soon as his troops came into Scot-
land, Cromwell very readily received them, but would not
let them march together, but dispersed them, to fill up the
regiments of those who were more his creatures. The
Colonel, hearing this, would not curry him any more; but
rather employed himself in securing, as much as was
necessary, his own county, for which he was sent down by
the Council of State, who at that time were very much
surprised at hearing that the King of Scots was passed by
Cromwell, and had entered with a great army into England.
Bradshaw himself, stout-hearted as he was, privately could
not conceal his fear; some raged, and uttered sad discon-
tents against Cromwell, and suspicions of his fidelity; they
all considered that Cromwell was behind, of whom I think
they scarce had any account, or of his intention, or how
this error came about, to suffer the enemy to enter here,
where there was no army to encounter him. Both the city
and country (by the angry presbyters, wavering in their
constancy to them and the liberties they had purchased)
were all amazed, and doubtful of their own and the Com-
monwealth’s safety. Some could not hide very pale and
unmanly fears, and were in such distraction of spirit that
it much disturbed their councils. Colonel Hutchinson,
who ever had most vigour and cheerfulness when there
was most danger, encouraged them, as they were one day
in a private council raging and crying out on Cromwell’s
1651.] COURAGE AND PRUDENCE OF THE COUNCIL.
149
miscarriages, to apply themselves to councils of safety, and
not to lose time in accusing others, while they might yet
provide to save the endangered realm, or at least to fall
nobly in defence of it, and not to yield to fear and despair.
These and suchlike things being urged, they at length re-
collected themselves, and every man that had courage and
interest in their counties went down to look to them.”
Upon this passage the Reverend Julius Hutchinson, the
editor of Colonel Hutchinson’s Memoirs, has this note—
“The trepidation of the Council of State is well described
by Whitelock.” Now, so far is Whitelock from saying
anything of the kind, that his account—written at the time,
and when he was in daily conference with the Council of
State, of which he was a leading member—particularly de-
scribes the courage, as well as the diligence and prudence,
exhibited by the Council of State in this trying crisis.
Under date August 19, 1651, he says: “The Council of
State during this action [the advance of the Scots' army]
had almost hourly messengers going out and returning
from the several forces, carrying advice and directions to
them, and bringing to the Council an account of thei
It could
hardly be that any affair of this nature could be managed
motions and designs, and of the enemy’s motions.
with more diligence, courage, and prudence than this was ;
nor, peradventure, was there ever so great a body of men so
* Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson,
pp. 355, 356, Bohn's edition, London,
1854.—Colonel Hutchinson, of whom
we seldom hear in the records of that
time, though his wife's interesting
Memoirs have made his name well
known, might be, and on his wife's
showing was, a very respectable country
gentleman; but there needs some cor-
roborative evidence, in addition to his
wife's testimony, to prove that he saved
the Commonwealth on this occasion.
From the terms in which Mrs. Hutch-
inson speaks of Monk, it may be in-
ferred that Ludlow's charge against
Colonel Hutchinson, of cooperation
with Monk, is groundless. The reader
has seen, in a preceding page, Alger-
non Sydney's opinion of Colonel
Hutchinson—certainly not a compli-
mentary one,
150 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
#
well armed and provided got together in so short a time as
were now raised, and sent away to join with the rest of
the forces attending [i. e., watching the movements of the
Ring.” -
Mr. Brodie says, “Ludlow corroborates Mrs. Hutchin-
son’s account.” As far as I can see, Ludlow does not
corroborate Mrs. Hutchinson in the least. Ludlow says:
“They [the Scots] passed the River Tweed” near Carlisle,
there being a strong garrison in Berwick for the Parlia-
ment, and were considerably advanced in their march
before our army in Scotland were acquainted with their
design. Major-General Harrison, with about 4,000 horse
and foot, somewhat obstructed their march, though he
was not considerable enough to fight them; and being
joined by Major-General Lambert, with a party of horse
from the army, they observed the enemy so closely as to .
keep them from excursions, and to prevent others from
joining with them. The Scots, who were in great expec-
tation of assistance from Wales, and relied much upon
Colonel Massey’s interestin Gloucestershire, advanced that
way. Few of the country came in to them; but, on the
other side, so affectionate were the people to the Common-
wealth, that they brought in horse and foot from all parts
to assist the Parliament, insomuch that their number was
by many thought sufficient to have beaten the enemy,
without the assistance of the army; some even of the ex-
cluded members appearing in arms, and leading regiments
against the common enemy.” Not a word here that
seems in the least to corroborate the aspersions cast by
* Whitelock, pp. 502, 503, August was evidently not extensive. However,
10, 1651. the Scots did pass the border near
* History of the British Empire, Carlisle. -
vol. iv. p. 305, note. * Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 362,
* Ludlow's geographical knowledge 363; 2nd edition, London, 1721.
1651.] ZEAL OF THE PEOPLE AGAINST THE ENEMY. 151
Mrs. Hutchinson upon the Council of State, of which her
husband was not then a member, in which fact may
perhaps be discovered the cause of her imputations of
cowardice. Ludlow's account of the zeal of the people in
all parts of England “against the common enemy”—for
such the Stuarts and their adherents might be most truly
called at all times, in 1745 as well as in 1645 and 1651–
is fully supported by Whitelock as well as by the MS.
minutes of the Council of State ; and many will be of the
opinion stated by Ludlow, that the forces suddenly raised
and got together by the Council of State, particularly with
such soldiers as Lambert and Harrison to lead them,
would have been quite sufficient to have beaten the enemy,
without the assistance of Cromwell and his army.
But the best defence of the Council of State against the
aspersions of Mrs. Hutchinson is afforded by their own
Order Book. The fair-copy of the minutes of the Council
of State for this particular time is lost, but, happily, the
original rough drafts have been preserved; and the hasty
almost illegible writing, the interlineations, marginal jot-
tings, and memoranda, present what may be not untruly
called a graphic picture of the rapid and energetic action
with which they encountered the danger that threatened
them—with no trace of the “very pale and unmanly fears”
which Mrs. Hutchinson has thought fit to impute to them.
There is not, in fact, in the whole of this graphic record
of their proceedings, one trace of ground for this malicious
imputation.'
! It is remarkable how fond Mrs.
Hutchinson is of imputing cowardice
and baseness. Some of her imputa-
tions of this sort are ludicrous—as, for
instance, where she charges the Scots
with cowardice for killing Colonel
Thornhagh, who made such speed to
set upon a troop of Scotch lancers,
that he was somewhat in advance of
his regiment; and the lady is wroth
because the Scots did not wait, and
let him kill a few of them before his
152 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. X. -
In the first place, there are some circumstances recorded in
the MS. minutes of the proceedings of the Council of State,
which are at variance with Mrs. Hutchinson's statement
that when the Scottish army entered England, there was no
army there to encounter them. On the 12th of March of
this year we find, in the Order Book of the Council of State,
a minute respecting the “discovery from Scotland of a plot
of some gentlemen in Cheshire and Lancashire.” On the
15th of March, three days after, the Council of State ordered,
“That a letter be written to the Lord-General [Cromwell],
to take notice of the receipt of his letter; to let him know
that the Council look upon the discovery made by the late
letters sent from his Lordship as a very great mercy, and
bless God for it, and for the good news of his Lordship’s
recovery ; to desire him to send the person lately appre-
hended there, to this town in a ship of war; to desire his
regiment came up. And then, because
the Scots naturally defended themselves
when they could, and asked quarter'
when they could not, this just and
merciful woman thus characterises the
barbarity of Thornhagh's regiment—
the Scotch lancers, be it repeated, Were
only a troop : “I)eaf to the cries of
every coward that asked mercy, they
killed all, and would not a captive
should live to see their colonel die; but
said the whole kingdom of Scotland
was too mean a sacrifice for that brave
man.” When the Battle of the Metau-
rus was lost, Hasdrubal spurred his
horse into the midst of a Roman co-
hort, and there fell sword in hand—
fighting, says Livy, as became the son
of Hamilcar and brother of Hannibal.
I}ut who talks of the cowardice of the
Roman cohort for killing him 2 Though
there it was a whole cohort against
One man, who possibly might have
been saved (though Mrs. Hutchinson,
as the wife of a colonel, and not an
absolute fool, though not quite so wise
as she imagined herself to be, ought to
have known that in the heat of action
such a thing is always difficult and
often impossible), whereas in the case
of Colonel Thornhagh, he was followed
(if at a little distance) by his regiment.
Consequently, how could it prove
cowardice, in a troop attacked by a
regiment, that the troop killed the
colonel of the regiment instead of
saving his life, when they only killed
him as being the first man of his regi-
ment who attacked them?
* Order Book of the Council of
State, March 12, 165%, MS. State
Paper Office.—On the same day there
is a proclamation to “all officers and
soldiers who have come into England,
Some with leave and some without leave,
forthwith to repair to their colours.”
1651.] GREAT EXERTIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 153
Lordship to give intelligence to this Council of anything
which may occur to his Lordship there, which may relate
to the public peace, and the Council will take care to do
the like to him.” In consequence of this discovery,
Major-General Harrison was, on the 19th of March, sent
down to the northern counties—Derby, Nottingham, Lan-
caster, York; and Sir Arthur Haselrig was desired, with
the forces and garrisons under his command in the four
northern counties, Northumberland, Durham, Westmore-
land, and Cumberland, to give assistance to Major-General
Harrison.” On Monday the 24th of March, an order is
made by the Council of State, “That an Adjutant-General
be allowed to Major-General Harrison for his expedition
into the North, and that he be allowed the pay of 14s. per
diem for himself and two men; which pay is to be satisfied
unto him out of the incidents of the Council.” On the
7th of April an order was made “for raising 4,000 horse and
dragoons for the safety of the Commonwealth.” And on
the same day “a petition of many godly and well-affected
persons in the county of Norfolk, concerning the associating
of honest men there for the defence of the public”—a pe-
tition which shows that the Government was by no means
generally unpopular at that particular time—was referred
Order Book of the Council of
State, Saturday, March 15, 1653, MS.
State Paper Office. -
* Ibid. March 19, 165?.
* Ibid. March 24, 165?–On the
same day there is a minute of the
Council of State, which still further
confirms what I have before said as to
the erroneous statement of Roger Coke,
that the Parliament never pressed
“either soldiers or seamen in all these
wars.”—Detection of the Court and
State of England, vol. ii. p. 30. The
following is the minute of the Council
of State —“That it be reported to the
Barliament that the Council find great
difficulty to get recruits for Ireland, of
which the regiments there have great
need. And therefore offer it to the
consideration of the Parliament, that
2,500 recruits may be raised by way
of press within the county of Cornwall,
from whence the Council conceive they
may be sent much cheaper and more
conveniently than from other places.”
—Order Book of the Council of State,
March 24, 1653, MS. State Paper
Office.
154 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [Char. X.
to a committee, “who are to speak with the gentlemen that
attend that business, and give them thanks for their good
affection, and consider with them what use may be made
of what they offer, and report the same to the Council.”
On the following day an order was made, “That a letter be
written to the Lord-General, signifying the present state of
those forces in Lancashire, and the danger that threatens
the Commonwealth in the parts adjacent; and to desire
his Excellency to order his intended expedition upon the
enemy, so that he may be able to attend their attempts for
the invasion of this Commonwealth.” On the 24th of April
it was ordered, “That the report concerning the business
of the gentlemen who were secured in Cheshire upon the
discovery of the conspiracy be made to-morrow in the
afternoon.” And we find, by the minutes of the 9th of
May, that the Council of State were making great ex-
ertions to send troops to Major-General Harrison in
the North–six troops of horse of 100 each, and “100
dragoons of Captain Okey's troop of dragoons,” in all 700°
men despatched: and it was ordered, “That a troop of
dragoons be sent to attend the demolishing of Nottingham
Castle, and the two companies of foot now there are to march
to Major-General Harrison.” ” On the 30th of May a letter
from Major-General Harrison from Lancaster, of May 27,
was referred to the Committee of Irish and Scottish Affairs."
It appears, then, that the forces drawn northwards under
* Order Book of the Council of State, May 9, 1651, MS. State Paper
State, April 7, 1651, MS. State Paper
Office.
* Ibid. April 8, 1651.
* Ibid. April 24, 1651.
* This further shows the numerical
proportion of dragoons to horse, already
stated, namely, about one to six,−See
Vol. I. p. 44.
* Order Book of the Council of
Office.—The following order of the
13th of the same month has re-
ference to what was needed at that
critical time—secret service : “That
£100 be paid by Mr. Frost unto
Captain Bishop, to be by him paid unto
a certain man for a special service.”—
Ibid. May 13, 1651.
* Ibid. May 30, 1651.
1651.] INVASION OF ENGLAND BY THE SCOTS. ' 155
Major-General Harrison were intended not only to suppress
the intended insurrection in Cheshire and Lancashire, but
to resist any invasion of England by the army of the King
of Scots; and that therefore the Council of State was by
no means taken by surprise, and altogether unprepared, by
the invasion that ended in the Battle of Worcester."
When Cromwell wrote to the Speaker on the 4th of
August, the army of the King of Scots had not entered
England. On the 6th of August the Scots’ army marched
into England over the border about three miles from Car-
lisle; and on the same day Cromwell, with about 10,000
horse and foot, and a light train, that he might move
the swifter, marched from Leith, having despatched Major-
General Lambert the day before (the 5th of August),
with about 3,000 horse and dragoons.
In the afternoon of the 9th of August, the Council of
State received by an express a letter from Mr. George
Downing, dated from Newcastle on the 7th, containing
the news that the King of Scots, with what forces were
left with him, to the number of 14,000 men, had in-
vaded England, and was advancing southward by rapid
marches; part of the Parliament’s forces, consisting
of the cavalry under Major-General Lambert, being
in his van, and the Lord-General Cromwell with the rest
following in his rear. The House being adjourned for
four days, the Council of State thought this intelligence
so important that they met the next morning,” the 10th,
though a Sunday, and passed the following Orders:—
1 See further evidence of this in the R. W. Blencowe : London, 1825.
Order Book of the Council of State, * This meeting is headed “Sunday,
March 26, 1651, MS. State Paper August 10, 1651.”—Order Book of the
Office. - Council of State, MS. State Paper
* Lord Leicester's Journal, pp. 110, Office.
111, in Sydney Papers, edited by
156 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
º
“To write a letter to the Lord Grey to come forthwith
to town; to give him notice of the Scottish march.”
“That the letter now read be sent to the Lord Mayor,
with a copy of the letter from Scout-master-General
I)owning, to be published at Paul’s ” [the next two words I
cannot decypher, but I think they are “this forenoon; ”
“this fore—” is legible].
On the afternoon" of the same day, the Council of State
again met, and made the following orders:–
“That a warrant be sent to the Lieutenant of the Tower,
that the prisoners in the Tower are to be kept close pri-
soners till further order.”
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to desire him
to take care of the West, in the absence of Major-General
Desborowe; and to send two ships of those with him
toward the Isle of Man and those parts, to prevent the
landing of any forces from the Isle of Man.” - -
“That letters be written to the several militias forthwith,
to bring the forces of their counties together, without any
delay, to some place where they are to be ready to execute
such orders as shall be sent them from the Parliament,
this Council, or Lieutenant-General Fleetwood.”
“That letters be written to all the militias in the way
toward Staffordshire, to get together all their forces, and
furnish them with a fortnight’s pay, and have them ready
to receive the orders of the Parliament, this Council, Lieu-
tenant-General Fleetwood, or Major-General Harrison.”
“To write to Major-General Harrison, to give him an
account of what posture things are put into in respect of
forces in these parts; and that he goes on to raise the
The heading of the afternoon's day.”—Order Book of the Council of
meeting is, instead of the old form “a State, Sunday, August 10, 1651, MS.
meridie,” “the afternoon of the same State Paper Office. -
1651.] THE BROAD PLACE AT WHITEHALL ON AUG, 10. 157
honest men he speaks on, and that the Council will move
the Parliament for pay for them.”
Now, as the express from Scout-master-General Down-
ing only arrived on Saturday afternoon, and by Sunday
afternoon—that is, in the course of twenty-four hours—all
these energetic proceedings were taken by the Council of
State; couriers, mounted on the fleetest horses, despatched
with letters to Lord Grey, to General Blake, to Major-
General Harrison, and to all the militias of the several
counties; and such expedition used that satisfactory
answers to their letters were received by Tuesday the 12th
of August—that is in forty-eight hours, as appears by the
Council’s report to the Parliament, to be quoted presently
—it will be observed that Mrs. Hutchinson’s assertions
respecting the Council of State’s having been paralysed
by fear to such an extent as to be incapable of efficient
action, till, “one day in a private council, Colonel
Hutchinson encouraged them ’’ (she does not say the
evening of Saturday, the 9th of August, the only portion
of time between the receipt of the news of the Scottish
invasion and their energetic action to resist it when what
she asserts was possible) are to the last degree improbable,
not to use a stronger word. In fact, Mrs. Hutchinson’s
words, according to their most obvious construction, imply
that Colonel Hutchinson was in Nottinghamshire at the time
the express from Downing reached the Council of State.
On that Sunday, the 10th of August 1651, “the broad
place at Whitehall” (it is in these words that the minutes
of the Council describe the space in front of Whitehall)
presented an extraordinary spectacle. The ordinary staff
consisted of twelve” mounted messengers, who waited the
1 Order Book of the Council of State Paper Office.
State, Sunday, August 10, 1651, MS. * “That the twelve messengers
- 158 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
orders of the Secretary of the Council of State in “the broad
place at Whitehall,” which, though we pass that spot now
without emotion, possessed at that time a strange and
terrible interest, associated with that transaction which,
even Hume admits, “corresponded to the greatest concep-
tion that is suggested in the annals of human kind—the
delegates of a great people sitting in judgment upon
their supreme magistrate, and trying him for his misgow-
ernment and breach of trust.” But on this memorable
Sunday, the 10th of August, 1651, a large addition was
necessarily made by the Secretary of the Council to his
staff of mounted messengers. And one by one, as they
received their despatches, courier after courier set spurs to
his fleet horse, and galloped off from the door of the
Council Chamber. In this case the couriers must have been
far more numerous, as their business was far more momen-
tous, than Sir Walter Scott’s
Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men
who
Waited the beck of the warders ten.
But the speed with which the Council’s couriers galloped
off from the front of Whitehall, in various directions, may
recall the scene so graphically described in the “Lay of the
Last Minstrel;"—
And out! and out !
In hasty route,
The horsemen gallop'd forth;
Dispersing to the south to scout,
And east, and west, and north.
hitherto attending the Council be enter-
tained still in the service of the Council,
to be at the direction of the Secretary.
And shall have 5s. per diem [each] for
their salary, and 6d. per mile for riding,
in the same manner they formerly had
at Derby House.” “That Mr. Frost
shall entertain one servant to keep the
office and to be at his command to call
messengers, &c., and that he shall have
28, per diem for his salary.”—Order
Book of the Council of State, June
5, 1649, MS. State Paper Office.
* Hume's Hist. of England, chap.lix.
1651.] EXERTIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 1.59
On Monday the 11th of August, the Council of State
ordered:—
“That a letter be written to the Lord Mayor of
London, to desire him that a Common Council may be
warned to meet this afternoon, at 2 of the clock, to be in
readiness to receive some members of this Council, in
order to communicate something unto them in order to
public safety.”
“That Mr. Bond, Mr. Chaloner, Mr. Darley, Colonel
Purefoy, Lord-Commissioner Whitelock, Lord Grey, Colonel
Fielder, Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, Mr. Goodwyn,
Mr. Scot, Mr. Carew, or any three of them, be appointed a
Committee, to consider of what is fit to be done at this
time for the safety of the Commonwealth, and to report
their opinion to the Council from time to time, as they shall
think fit.”
Another Committee is appointed “to go to the Common
Council of London at 4 P. M. this day, to inform them of
the invasion of this land by the King of Scots, the time and
manner thereof; and also of the posture of the forces of this
Commonwealth both in Scotland and England, as to preven-
tion of the danger to the Commonwealth thereby; and to
move the City to do their best for raising some considerable
forces for the defence of the Parliament and City, in case the
enemy should pass our forces. And that they also take care
for the quiet of the City within itself, and to prevent any
assistance to be sent to, or any correspondence to be held
with, the Scots’ King, or any of his party.” ---
“That the Lord Grey be desired to repair into Leices-
tershire, to do there what shall occur to him to be for the
prevention of the Scots' army in their march.”
“That a warrant be forthwith issued, to stay the 1,500
160 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, [CHAP. X.
backs, breasts, and pots" that are now shipped to go to Scot-
land, and that they be brought back to the Tower till
further order.”
At the afternoon meeting of the Council of State, the
Council made two orders, relating to a subject not connected
with the invasion of the Scots; which circumstance is of
itself sufficient proof that, so far from the Council’s being
in that state of trepidation alleged by Mrs. Hutchinson,
they not only took all the requisite steps for resisting the
invasion, but attended also to ordinary business. The two
orders referred to are as follows : —
“That a declaration be published, that all those that
come to drink the waters at Lewisham in Kent do behave
themselves peaceably, without tumult.”
“That Lieutenant-General [Fleetwood] be desired to
send a fit party of horse, to prevent tumults and miscar-
riages at the waters at Lewisham.”
Then comes the following order:-‘‘That Mr. Rush-
worth * and Captain Bishop maintain intelligence between
the Council and the armies” [namely, 1, the army under
Cromwell: 2, that under Lambert : 3, that under Har-
rison]; “and that the sum of £200 be paid to Captain
Bishop by Mr. Frost, out of the monies in his hands for
the use of the Council.”
On the following day, Tuesday the 12th of August, the
House passed three Acts for the support of the Common-
wealth against the present danger—namely: 1. An Act
* “Backs "are the back-pieces of the
defensive armour; “breasts * are the
front pieces, i.e. the cuirasses or cors-
lets; “pots” are helmets.
* John Rushworth, the great histo-
rical collector, who appears from this
minute to have by this time returned to
London, having been secretary to
Cromwell at the time of the Battle of
Dunbar, at which he was present.
* Order Book of the Council of State,
Monday, August 11, 1651, MS. State
Paper Office.
1651. EXERTIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 161
empowering the Commissioners of the Militia to raise forces
and money; and for reviving all commissions formerly
granted by Ordinance of Parliament, or the Council of
State, to any Colonels and other officers. —2. An Act
containing instructions to the Commissioners of the Militia.
–3. An Act for declaring it High Treason to hold any
correspondence with the King of Scots.
On the same day, Tuesday the 12th of August, the
Council of State made the following orders:–
“That a letter be written to the Lord Fairfax, to desire
his Lordship to use his best endeavours for the raising of
forces in Yorkshire.”
“That the 1,000 backs and breasts, the 1,500 pots, the
1,000 long' pikes, the 1,000 snaphance [flintlock]
muskets, the 500 matchlock muskets, which were shipped
on board the Thomas of London, Jonathan Gibbs, master,
be returned back into the Tower.”
“That it be reported to the Parliament, that the Council
of State, taking into consideration the present state of
affairs upon occasion of the Scottish army marching into
England, and finding that their march is not upon confi-
dence, with which, when it was whole and unbroken, they
could not be provoked to give battle to our army, or come
out of their straights to save their own country, which they
saw broken in one part after another; despairing of their
own country, which they have deserted as lost, they are
marched into England with their last hope, that from their
own party of the traitors to this Commonwealth, there will
be a great conflux unto them for their recruits and assist-
ance, in which, if they should be disappointed, they will
soon come to nothing, though they should have but weak
This shows that the pikes were of various lengths.
WOL. II. M
162 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
f--
opposition. And although the Council find also, that by
the great diligence and care of the Lord-General and his
officers, the forces of the nation are disposed so as they
conceive they will not be able to advance far before our
forces will be with them, and that there will be (through
God’s goodness) a speedy and thorough end of the work;
yet they have thought fit, for the better prevention of any
such resort and recruit to them, and also for the better
preserving the peace of these parts, humbly to offer the
ensuing particulars to the consideration of the Parliament,
if they shall so judge fit, viz; :—
“1. All persons joining or giving any aid whatever to
the Scottish army shall be tried by the Council of War,
and upon due proof of the fact shall suffer death and for-
feit, as in case of treason, and be executed accordingly.
“2. One-third part of the estate of offenders to all who
shall discover them.”
The rest of the articles relate to disarming suspected
persons, and police regulations. The Lord Mayor and the
rest of the Committee of the Militia of the City, and also
the Commissioners of the Militia of Westminster, the
Hamlets, and Southwark, are to sit daily.
On the same day a letter is ordered to be written to the
commander of the 2,000 foot at Weymouth, to march them
with all expedition to Reading. A warrant is ordered to be
prepared, to be sent to the several Postmasters in London
and elsewhere upon the roads, to require them to keep a
certain number of horses constantly in the house, to be
ready upon all occasions. Letters are ordered to be written
to the militias, to apply some horses towards the post-roads;
Order Book of the Council of State, Tuesday, August 12, 1651, MS. State
Paper Office.
1651.] EXERTIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE.
163
and also to the Commissioners of the Militias of the
several counties, “to enclose the Act against correspon-
dence with Charles Stuart (which was, as we have seen,
passed that day—and this circumstance shows the ra-
pidity with which the Council acted); and that they take
care to deliver it to the Sheriffs, who are to cause the
same to be proclaimed forthwith in every market town,
and at their County Courts, and that it be also sent to
every parish.” -
On the same day a report is ordered to be made to the
Parliament of the various proceedings they have taken
upon the first notice received of the Scottish army marching
towards England.
The Council of State on the same day also made the fol-
lowing orders:—
“That six blank horse-commissions be prepared, to be
given to the Lord Grey,” for the raising of voluntarie
[volunteer] horse in the counties of Northampton, Leices-
ter, and Rutland.”
“That the Lord Grey have a commission to command
the forces of Leicester, Northampton, and Rutland, and to
* Order Book of the Council of Stamford or Baron Grey of Groby;
State, Tuesday, August 12, 1651, MS.
State Paper Office.
* The Lord Grey of Groby. The
Lord Grey of Werke, who had been a
member of the Council of State in the
two former years, was not re-elected in
February 1651. Henry Grey, second
Baron Grey of Groby, was created
Earl of Stamford in 1628. The person
here mentioned as Lord Grey of Gro-
by was Thomas Grey, the eldest son
of the Henry Grey above mentioned ;
and as he died during the life of his
father, he never became either Earl of
M
but his son, Thomas Grey, succeeded
his grandfather, in 1673, as second
Earl of Stamford and third Baron
Grey of Groby. The Lord Grey of
Werke had been Sir William Grey,
one of King James's baronets, and
was created Baron Grey of Werke in
1624. Though the name of Grey, as a
baronial name, is nearly as old in
England as that of Plantagenet, these
peerages of Groby and Werke were,
it will be observed, only Stuart peer-
ages, the least honourable in the
English annals.
$)
164, COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
==
receive his orders from the Parliament, the Council, and
the Lord-General.” .
“That £200 be paid unto the Lord Grey, for his inci-
dent charges in his journey and expedition which he is
now sent upon.” "
On Wednesday the 13th of August the Council of State
continued their labours, as the following orders show:—
“That Barnet be appointed for the place of rendezvous
for the forces which are to be gathered together in these
parts, and Tuesday next is to be the day when the forces
are to rendezvous.”
“That the Commissioners of the Militia of Leicester,
Rutland, and Northampton do draw the forces of their
respective counties to several rendezvous, and send a
month’s pay with them, who are to receive orders from the
Lord Grey.” -
“That the Lord Grey shall have power to list what
volunteer horse will offer themselves, and to assure them
pay, from the time they are in actual service, for so long
as they continue in service.”
The free constitutional spirit of the Council of State—a
spirit in strict accordance with the ancient English prin-
ciples of constitutional liberty, self-government, and self-
defence—is strongly marked, even at this critical time, by
the following directions to Lord Grey, to receive advice
from the County Militia Commissioners; and is in mani-
fest contrast with the more centralised but not more effi-
cient action of the Government, when Cromwell concen-
trated the sovereignty in his single person :-
“That whereas there was yesterday an order made
for the giving unto the Lord Grey six blank horse-
Order Book of the Council of Paper Office. -
State, August 12, 1651, MS. State * Ibid. August 13, 1651.
1651.] EXERTIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 165
commissions, for the raising of so many voluntary troops
for the defence of those parts, the Council doth now
declare that their intention is that the officers of the said
troops, as also the soldiers, are to be appointed and
enlisted by the Lord Grey with the approbation of the Com-
missioners of the Militia for that county in which any of
the said troops shall be raised.”
On Thursday, 14th August 1651, the Council thus
continued their labours:—
“That 1,000 dragoons be mounted to go towards the
army.”
“That the Commissioners of the Militia of London,
Westminster, Hamlets, and Southwark do make a return
to the Council, by 3 P.M., what horses they have of those
which they have seized that are fit for dragoons, except
those that are already listed in troops for the service of
the Parliament.”
“That it may be reported to the Parliament, that Mr.
John Claypoole [sic] may be authorised to raise a troop of
horse, such as shall come voluntarily * unto him, in the
counties of Northampton and Lincoln, or elsewhere ; and
that they may be paid according to the establishment of
the army.” "
On Friday morning, 15th August 1651, the Council
ordered:—“That a letter be written to the Commissioners
of the Militia of Salop, to quicken them, and take notice of
their slow proceeding, and to [desire them to] certify who
* Order Book of the Council of
State, Wednesday, August 13, 1651,
MS. State Paper Office.
* Another example of the English
voluntary principle, in marked contrast
to that of the centralised despotisms
already widely spread over Europe,
and which the English Council of
State was even now exerting itself to
keep out of England.
* Order Book of the Council of
State, Thursday, August 14, 1651, MS.
State Paper Office.
166 comMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. CHAP, X.
of the Commissioners do not appear and act vigorously in
this time.”
“That answers be given to the letters from Staffordshire,
Cheshire, Lancashire, to approve their diligence, to desire
them to proceed with the greatest vigour to break bridges
and stop passes, and receive Orders from Major-General
Harrison.”
“That it be reported to the Parliament, that it is the
humble opinion of this Council that the regiment of
Colonel Gibbons may be forthwith mounted and sent toward
thearmy; and that for that purpose the Parliament will give
power to the Council, out of the horses now seized about
London and the parts adjacent, or otherwise, to take up
horses to mount the said regiments; and that the said
horses be prized with the names of the proprietors of them,
listed, and tickets given to them for payment of them, if
any of them shall be lost or spoiled, if the Parliament shall
so think fit.”
Friday afternoon, 15th August, 1651.-“That the propo-
sition of Sir Michael Livesey, for the raising of a regiment
of horse and a regiment of foot volunteers in the county of
Rent, be accepted of, and he desired to repair into the
country to press the same into execution.
“That the Parliament be moved that the regiment of
Colonel Gibbons may be paid as so many dragoons, for so
long time as they shall be continued to serve in that con-
dition.” -
Saturday, 16th August, 1651.-‘‘That a letter be written
to the Commissioners of Kent, to let them know the Coun-
cil expects that they should send up their two troops of *
* Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Friday afternoon, August 15,
State, Friday morning, August 15, 1651. -
1651, MS. State Paper Office.
1651.] EXERTIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 167
horse to the rendezvous on Tuesday next; and that they
should proceed to the raising of their regiments of foot in
full numbers.” "
Monday morning, 18th August, 1651.-“That a short let-
ter be prepared, to be sent to the several militias of this
nation, to give them a brief account of the state of the
armies.”
“That the letter from Colonel Blake of the 15th inst.
be referred to the Committee of the Admiralty.” ”
Monday afternoon, 18th August, 1651.-‘‘That a letter be
written to the Lord Grey, to be by him communicated to
the Commissioners of the Militia for Northampton, Leices-
ter, and Rutland, to desire his Lordship to cause the whole
forces of Northampton, Leicester, and Rutland to march to
Daventree, the 23rd of August.”
“That a letter be written to the Commissioners of Militia
for the counties of Leicester, Rutland, Lincoln, Northamp-
ton, Warwick, Oxford, Bedford, Huntingdon, Buckingham,
and Worcester, to draw what forces they can possibly to-
gether, and to send them to Daventree on Saturday the 23rd
of August, to a rendezvous; to desire them to put a week’s
pay into the pockets of the private soldiers, and to send
the other three weeks’ [pay] to the field-officers, or, in de-
fect of them, to the captains of companies; and they are
to take care that none be armed who have been in arms
against the Parliament.”
“That Lieutenant-General Fleetwood be appointed
Commander-in-Chief of all the forces which are now
* Order Book of the Council of Council at that time, but only that
State, Saturday, August 16, 1651, part of it which appears of the great-
MS. State Paper Office.—It may be est historical interest.
proper to state, that the minutes * Ibid. Monday morning, August 18,
here extracted by no means represent 1651. -
all the business transacted by the
168 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. (Cºr. X
===
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-
=
==
-
==
-
-
---
-
appointed to rendezvous at Barnet, Daventree, and St."
Albans.” "
Admiring as I do the great political ability, as well as
the spotless integrity, of Sir Henry Vane, I might be dis-
posed, if I were writing in the spirit of an advocate, to keep
back the minute which follows. But, as I have said before,
I am anxious to ascertain the truth, if possible, whatever
it may be :— t --
“That a letter be written to Sir H. Wane, to let him
know that, in the present state of affairs, the Council are of
opinion that his presence is necessary here; to desire him,
therefore, to repair up hither with all convenient speed.””
It appears, by the subsequent proceedings of the Council
in which Vane’s name appears, that he obeyed this sum-
mons. But why did he not come up sooner? It is impos-
sible that he should not have heard of the Scottish invasion.
I can see no solution of the question but the acceptance of
the authority of some of Vane’s cotemporaries on this point
of Vane’s character—that he was naturally a timid man,
and that he was at this critical time keeping out of the
way, though the courage he displayed at his trial and exe-
cution seemed to be at variance with that character. It is,
moreover, due to Vane's memory—which was assailed by
the malignity of Hyde, who himself never risked a scratch
of a finger in the cause, while he never scrupled to impute
cowardice to others, an imputation which veteran soldiers,
really brave men, are always slow to make—that the
veteran soldier Ludlow, who had proved his courage in so
many battles, says that to Vane's other great and esti-
mable qualities, “were added a resolution and courage, not
to be shaken, or diverted from the public service.”
* Order Book of the Council of State, Ilia. same meeting.
Monday afternoon, August 18, 1651, * Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. iii. pp.
MS. State Paper Office. 110, 111; 2nd edition, London, 1721.
1651.] IMPUTED TIMIDITY OF WANE. 169
The philosophy of courage is indeed a dark subject, in
regard to which few men are willing to give the evidence of
their actual experience, and consequently many difficulties
lie in the way of a complete elucidation of it. There is a
sort of courage which has been called “orator courage,”
which such men as Vane and Strafford possess, and which
is distinct from that sort of courage which leads men to
face death on fields of battle. This latter sort of courage I
do not think Strafford possessed, whether Vane possessed it
or not, though some modern writers have spoken of the
“valour" as well as the “capacity’ of Strafford. That
Strafford did not possess what is commonly understood by
“valour,” I think is proved by his letting the Scots pass
the Tyne at Newburn, when he commanded the English
army for Charles I. At the same time, though Strafford
behaved bravely, as well as Vane, both at his trial and exe-
cution, there was a fundamental distinction between them.
There was in Strafford a spirit of insolence, tyranny, and
cruelty of which there is no trace in Vane. Strafford was,
in one word, a bully. Vane was nothing of that. It is
also a very remarkable psychological fact, that while, both at
his trial and execution, “though timid by nature *—accord-
ing to Hume, who of course follows Hyde in the imputa-
tion of timidity against such a formidable enemy of the
Stuarts—“the persuasion of a just cause supported Vane
against the terrors of death, * * Lambert, who had faced
death on a hundred fields of battle, having been tried and
condemned at the same time as Vane, obtained, by throw-
ing himself abjectly on the royal mercy, a reprieve at the
bar, and thus sacrificed, to the fear of death on the scaffold,
all those principles he had so long and so bravely fought
and bled for. There was probably a constitutional or organic
* Hume's History, chap. lxiii.
170 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. X.
distinction between the courage and fear of Vane and
Lambert. Yet, when we look at these two men at the time
of the Scottish invasion, and see Vane keeping himself
absent even from his ordinary duty at the Council of State,
and Lambert gallantly leading the Ironside cavalry, ha-
rassing the march of the Scots, and then thoroughly
defeating them at Worcester; and then look again at the
trial of the same two men for their lives, and see Vane
bravely facing death, and Lambert abjectly shrinking from
it: when we remember, moreover, the remark of Sir William
Temple, “ some are brave one day and cowards another,
as great captains have often told me from their own expe-
rience and observation”—the reported saying of Napoleon,
that “no man is brave at two o'clock in the morning”—and
the fact that there were occasions on which even Nelson'
was subject to fear, we must feel strongly the rashness
and presumption of dogmatising, either generally or
specially, on the subject of courage and cowardice.
On Tuesday, 19th August. 1651, the Council made
the following orders, among many others:–
“That such arms shall be taken out of the Tower as
shall be necessary for the soldiers.”
“That authority be given to the several Postmasters
upon the road, to press horses upon this exigent for the
despatching of intelligence.” --
“That a commission be sent to Colonel Blake, to com-
mand-in-chief, in the absence of Major-General Desborowe,
* I have seen it stated, on the au-
thority of a friend of Nelson, that
Nelson, having one day been taken by
him into his phaeton-and-four for a
drive, in a few minutes became uneasy;
and then, with evident marks of ner-
vousness, requested that he might be
set down, expressing his fears of being
run away with, of which there was no
danger, since the horses, though lively,
were perfectly broken in. But the
situation was novel to the man of the
Nile and Trafalgar.
1651.] CHARLES STUART PROCLAIMED TRAITOR. 171
all the forces raised and to be raised in the counties of
Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset; and that letters
be written to those four counties to obey his orders.”
“That power be given to the Lord President of the
Council, in case that any packets shall arrive here in the
night-time, to Open the said letters, and, according as he
shall find they do import, he is to give Order for the sum-
moning of a Council immediately.”
Wednesday, 20th August, 1651–4. That letters be written
to the Commissioners of the Militia for the counties of
Wilts, Gloucester, Hereford, and South Wales, to bring
what forces they can with all speed to a rendezvous at
Gloucester, for the security of those parts; and this ren-
dezvous to be at Gloucester on Monday next.””
Thursday, 21st August, 1651.-‘‘That Major Winthrope
do appoint a troop of horse to be in readiness, to observe
such directions as shall be given to him from the Treasurer
at War.”
- “That a letter be written to the several counties through
which the army is to march, to desire them to furnish
them with all provisions necessary for them of all kinds.”
“That Mr. Waller and Mr. Cromwell be desired to
repair into the county of Huntingdon; and that they and
the Commissioners of the Militia do take care that the
forces of that county may be drawn together to a rendez-
Vous.” ---
On the same day a committee was appointed, “to draw
a proclamation for the proclaiming of Charles Stuart
traitor, according to the debates had this day.”
On the same day, the 21st of August, the House received
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. August 20, 1651.
State, Tuesday, August 19, 1651, MS. * Ibid. August 21, 1651.
State Paper Office.
172 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
intelligence, that the Scots' army lay on the 17th at North-
wich, and the next day advanced between Nantwich and
Chester; and that Major-General Lambert and the forces
with him were cheerfully followed by the officers and sol-
diers of the Cheshire and Lancashire militia of foot; who
upon this emergency, though their harvest was ready to
cut, promised not to leave them till they either should be
properly dismissed, or the Lord put a seasonable issue to
the business." Under the same date, Whitelock mentions
“an account of forces raised in Salop and the neighbour-
ing counties, and breaking of bridges, and endeavouring to
divert the course of the Scots' army;” “that the Governor
of Stafford went to Harrison with 700 men; ” “that
4,000 of the General’s foot march in their shirts 20 miles
a day, and have their clothes and arms carried by the
country. * #
All this sufficiently shows that a Stuart, or any other
claimant of the Crown of England, had mighty small chance
of success in his attempt, when made by the help of a
foreign army, whether that army was Scotch, French, or
German. In fact this, as well as the attempt of 1745,
shows that it was a blunder of the Stuarts to think that
the English would allow a foreign army (for such, in fact,
the Scottish army then was) to impose a King upon them.
The zeal of the Parliamentary soldiers, and of the country
generally, is forcibly expressed in the fact last quoted from
Whitelock, that the soldiers’ upper clothes and arms were
“carried by the country,” in order that the soldiers might
march with more speed. As the Scots’ army with their
Ring advanced in that direction, “the Forest of Dean rose
for the Parliament, and there was great resort of people to
552
* Parl. Hist, vol. iii. p. 1369. * Whitelock, August 21, 1651.
1651.] GREAT CONTRAST BETWEEN 1651 AND 1660, 173
Gloucester and Hereford to defend those places.” In all
places, on the march of the King’s army southward, the
garrisons were summoned in the King’s name to surrender,
but without any success. And when, in the more eminent
places, Charles II. was proclaimed by heralds, the people
returned no approving shouts, but, on the contrary, as the
Royalists admit, preserved a gloomy silence, or exhibited—
as if they truly foreboded what was to come to pass in after-
years, under the King then proclaimed—the consternation
of persons stricken by some great calamity.”
It is strange indeed to turn from this spectacle to that
described by Pepys and Aubrey, as seen in London some
nine years after this month of August 1651. What was the
cause of the great change that took place, or at least that
appeared to take place, between 1651 and 1660? Was it
that the Government of the Long Parliament was popular,
and that of Cromwell unpopular 2 I think not. I think
that the Government of the Long Parliament and the
Government of Cromwell were both unpopular; for both
were arbitrary, and both imposed, of necessity perhaps, a
very heavy taxation. It might indeed at first sight appear,
as it at one time appeared to me, that this zeal of the
country, manifested on this occasion, against the King of
Scots, contrasted with the zeal manifested in 1660 for the
return of that same King of Scots as King of England,
showed that the Government of the Long Parliament was
popular, and that of Cromwell unpopular. But I think
that the zeal of August 1651 only expressed the determina-
tion of the English people not to have a King imposed
on them by a foreign army, and not the approbation of the
Government of the Rump; though that Government, as
* Perf. Diur. August 25 to Septem- * Bates, partii. pp. 120, 121.
ber 1, in Cromwelliana, p. 110.
174 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
==
compared with the Government of Charles II., might
well be called an assembly of gods as compared with an
assembly of baboons. No one can deny this who compares
Charles II.'s Council, as described in Pepys's Diary, with the
Council of State of the Long Parliament, as described in
their own minutes; which happily exist, to windicate their
memory to all after-ages against the scurrility not only of .
the Royalist writers, but of Cromwell, who destroyed them,
and of Cromwell’s parasites and worshippers. If I were
an advocate of this Rump and its Council of State, as some
men are advocates of Oliver Cromwell, it would be easy to
say that, by 1660, things had altered greatly—that Cromwell
had succeeded in so digusting all men, that they were will-
ing to try once more even the Government of the Stuarts.
But though it can be clearly proved that Cromwell’s
Government was unpopular, I think more unpopular than
that of the Long Parliament—for Cromwell’s usurpation
had taken away all hope of what both the army and the
people wanted, namely, “a free Parliament *—it can at the
same time, I think, be proved that the Rump was unpopular
also. In fact, in the saturnalia of the Restoration, the
most obtrusive exhibition was the roasting of rumps; there
was no burning of Oliver Cromwell in effigy. But there
was also a significant fact, which, though not noticed by
Pepys, is particularly mentioned by Aubrey : “Mem. that
Threadneedle Street was all day long, and late at night,
crammed with multitudes, crying out, “A free Parliament 1
—a free Parliament 1” I have never seen any completely
satisfactory answer made to the question why the Rump
Aubrey's Letters and Lives, vol. Some very good rumps of beef. Health
ii. p. 455 : London, 1813.−“Bells to King Charles II. was drunk in the
ringing, and bonfires all over the city streets by the bonfires, even on their
. . . They made little gibbets, and knees.”—Ibid.
roasted rumps of mutton; nay, I saw
1651.] THE CRY FOR A FREE PARLIAMENT. 175
put off so long the petitions presented to them for a free
Parliament. Scot, one of their ablest members, made this
answer: “The Dutch war came On—when Hannibal is ad
portas, something must be done eatra leges—we stayed to
end the Dutch war.” But the answer to this answer is,
that they were petitioned to dissolve, and make way for a
free Parliament, long before the Dutch war was thought of.
In fact, their conduct must be admitted to form the best
excuse, though far from a satisfactory excuse, for the con-
duct of Cromwell.
On Friday the 22nd, Mr. Scot and Mr. Salwey were sent
by the Council of State to the Major-Generals, with
instructions “to let them know what course the Council
have taken for raising and ordering of forces for the pre-
sent occasion, besides those with them; and thereupon to
confer and debate with them, at Councils of War or other-
wise, in what manner the forces of this Commonwealth may
be best employed against the enemy, with consideration to
all emergencies that may thence arise.” "
On the same day the following orders were made:–
“That a letter be written to Major-General Lambert, to
let him know that it is the opinion of this Council that a
considerable force of horse and dragoons should wait upon
the enemy, whereby he may be impeded in his march, kept
from refreshing his men, and the people discouraged from
coming in to them.”
“That a letter be written to the Lord-General, to ac-
quaint him with the resolutions of the Council taken this
day—both of the letter written to Major-General Lambert,
* Order Book of the Council of Esqrs., sent by the Council unto the
State, Friday, August 22, 1651, MS. Major-Generals of the Forces of the
State Paper Office : “Instructions for Parliament employed against the Scots'
Thomas Scot and Richard Salwey, army now in England.”
176 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X."
and likewise of sending Mr. Salwey and Mr. Scot to the
Major-Generals.” “.
“That a letter be written to the Commissioners of the
Militia for the four northern counties, to desire them to have
their militia forces speedily in readiness, and to apply them-
selves to the public service, that they may be assistant to
the Governors of Berwick and Carlisle, for the prevention
of any correspondence between Scotland and the Scottish
army in England.” - -
“That the Lord-Commissioner Whitlocke do report to
the Parliament, that it hath pleased God to take out of
this life Colonel Edward Popham, late one of the Generals
of the fleet of this Commonwealth.” -
The following minute of the same date shows that by
this time, the 22nd of August, Sir Henry Vane had returned
to his duty at the Council of State:—“That the Lord-Com-
missioner Whitlocke and Sir Henry Vane be desired to go
to Mrs. Popham from this Council, to condole with her the
loss of her husband; to let her know what a memory they
have of the good services done by her husband to this Com-
monwealth; and that they will upon all occasions be ready
to show respect unto those of his relations which [sic] he
hath left behind him.” -
“Saturday, 23rd August, 1651.—“That the Lord-Com-
missioner Whitlocke, Lord-Commissioner Lisle, Mr. Attor-
ney, Mr. Say, or any two of them, be appointed a committee,
* Order Book of the Council of fidelity, who was taken away by a
State, Friday, August 22, 1651, MS. fever at Dover, the 19th instant.”—
State Paper Office.—The Earl of Lord Leicester's Journal, p. 115, in
. Leicester thus notices in his Journal Sydney Papers, edited by R. W. Blen-
the death of Colonel Popham : cowe, London, 1825.
“Wednesday, 20th August, 1651–We * Order Book of the Council of
had news out of Kent of the death of State, Friday, August 22, 1651, MS.
Colonel Popham, one of our Admirals, State Paper Office.
a person of much honour and eminent -
1651.] SKIRMISH AT WARRINGTON. 177
to consider of the draught of a proclamation now brought
in for the proclaiming of Charles Stuart traitor, the de-
claration of the said C. Stuart upon his entering into the
Commonwealth of England with a Scottish army, and the
letter of the said C. Stuart to the City of London; and
upon consideration of the whole, to draw up something in
the nature of a proclamation, whereby he may be proclaimed
traitor; and this to be done so that it may be offered to
the Parliament on Monday morning.”
By the middle of August the Parliament had got
together so many troops, under those able commanders,
Lambert and Harrison, that it was believed, on good
grounds, that even had Cromwell remained in Scotland,
the enemy could easily have been defeated.
Upon Tuesday the 12th of August, the Scots’ King came
to Lancaster, and set all the prisoners in the Castle at
liberty. Upon Wednesday the 13th he lodged at Myerscoe,
Sir Thomas Tildesley’s house, and from thence marched
through Preston. On Thursday night he lodged at
Euxten-burgh, six miles on this side of Preston, Sir
Hugh Anderton's house, who was prisoner at Lancaster,
but set at liberty by the Scots.
cotemporary Parliamentary newspaper, “is a bloody papist,
and one that, when Prince Rupert was at Bolton, boasted
“This Anderton,” says a
much of being in blood to the elbows in that cruel mas-
sacre.” On the night of Friday, the 15th, the Scots’ King
| Order Book of the Council of
State, Saturday, August 23, 1651,
MS. State Paper Office.—On the
26th of August the letter of Charles
Stuart to the Lord Mayor was
burnt upon the Old Exchange by
the hangman; and the Parliament's
declaration against him, wherein he
WOI, II. N
was called “son of the late tyrant,” and
declared rebel and traitor, and public
enemy to the Commonwealth of Eng-
land, and against all his abettors, &c.,
proclaimed there and at Westminster
by beat of drum and sound of trumpet.
—Lord Leicester's Journal, p. 116.
178 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
ſ
---
---
lodged at Brine, six miles from Warrington, the house of
Sir William Gerard, a papist. -
On Saturday the 16th of August, there was a sharp
skirmish, at Warrington, between the army of the King
of Scots and the forces of Lambert and Harrison. The
fullest account of this skirmish which I have met with is
that quoted, in Lord Leicester’s Journal, from a cotempo-
rary newspaper. It is commonly stated that Lambert and
Harrison were “pressing hard on the rear” of the Scottish
army, whereas this account, written apparently by a Par-
liamentary officer who was present, mentions “the present
posture of flanking and fronting the enemy; ” and their
retiring to Knutsford Heath also shows that they kept on
the south of the enemy—that is, between the enemy and
London :-
“Saturday, 16th August.—About noon the enemy’s
scouts came into Warrington, and presently after a for-
lorn hope of horse and dragoons, we having left one com-
pany of foot to dispute the pass at the bridge and fords,
and to amuse the enemy; for the said passes, and several
other passes upon the river, were not tenable, by reason of
the enclosed grounds, whereby our horse could not have
room to charge, in order to the security of the foot. Yet
that single company of the Cheshire foot disputed the
bridge and pass with the enemy above an hour and a half;
and then he that commanded the foot drew them off, when
the enemy began to press hard upon him. Presently after
the enemy marched over the pass, with horse and foot,
towards our rearguard. We' marched to Knutsford Heath,
being a convenient place for Our horse to engage, expecting
' The special correspondent of Po- many of the officers of which could,
liticus, who sent this relation of the , like John Lilburne, wield the pen as
skirmish at Warrington, was probably well as the sword.
an officer of the Parliamentary army;
1651.] THE ARMY OF LAMBERT AND HARRISON. 179
the enemy would have advanced thither; but the van of
their army came that night about five or six miles on this
side Warrington. It is conceived best to continue in the
present posture of flanking and fronting the enemy, till
we have a conjunction with other forces, unless they press
hard, and force an engagement; and then (God willing)
our forces are resolved on some open plain to fight them,
we having 9,000 horse and dragoons, and between 3,000
and 4,000 foot, to give them battle.” " -
It may here be observed, that the large proportion of
horse to foot in the army of Lambert and Harrison (9,000
to 3,000), and the enclosed nature of the ground, “ whereby
our horse could not have room to charge,” as well as
Cromwell's orders not to risk a battle, may explain why such
soldiers as Lambert and Harrison, the best perhaps (not
even excepting Cromwell) whom that war had produced, did
not fight a battle with the invading army at Warrington.
If they had done so, and won the battle, which was pro-
bable, Cromwell would have been stripped of that “crown-
ing mercy’ which, though it did not actually give him a
crown, gave him a power greater than that of most wearers
of crowns.
On the 23rd of August, the House received intelligence
from the Major-Generals, Lambert and Harrison, dated the
22nd, that the Scots' army lay the night before at Tonge,
a village in Shropshire, on the borders of Staffordshire—
near to which are White Ladies’ Priory and Boscobel
House, known in connection with the escape of Charles
Journal of the Earl of Liecester, observes, in his preface, that “it may
pp. 112–114, in Sydney Papers, edited be presumed, from the care with which
by R. W. Blencowe, A.M. : London, Lord Leicester has copied them, that he
1825.-In regard to the passages ex- considered them faithful accounts of
tracted by Lord Leicester from the the transactions which they record.”
newspapers of the day, Mr. Blencow
N 2
180 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X.
after his defeat at Worcester—and that they inclined
towards Worcester; that Colonel Danvers, Governor of
Stafford, with some few horse, fell in upon some of their
quarters, killed five of their men, and gave an alarm to their
whole army. In another letter, it was stated that the
Scots had, of horse and foot, 120 columns; that their
horse were poor and harassed out; that their foot were
miserably ragged, and sick creatures a great number of
them ; that their King was found, with cap in hand,
desiring them yet a little longer to stick to him—per-
Suading them that, within two days’ march, they should
come into a country where all things would be plentifully
provided for them, and shortly thence to London. It was
also stated that the Parliament’s forces were at Tamworth,
and from thence had sent several parties to attend the
enemy’s motions; and intended to dispose their own
marches, in order to a conjunction with the Lord-General,
and the other forces lately sent from London.'
On Friday the 22nd of August, the Scots with their
Ring reached Worcester”; where the country forces made
a gallant resistance, and beat back the enemy several
times. But the townsmen having laid down their arms,
and some of them shooting out of the windows at the
Parliament’s soldiers, that had been sent by Harrison and
Lambert to secure Worcester, the latter removed their
ammunition and withdrew to Gloucester, 30 of them
keeping the enemy in check while they were so employed.”
The Council of State took measures for punishing the
townsmen of Worcester for their conduct on this occasion,
as appears by the following minute, made on the afternoon
* Parl. Hist, vol. iii. pp. 1369, Fleetwood, in Cromwelliana, p. 110.
, 1370; Whitelock, August 23, 1651. * Whitelock, August 25, 1651.
* Letter from Lieutenant-General -
1651.] DEFEAT OF THE EARL OF DERBY. 181
of the 29th of August : “That a letter be written to the
Lord-General, to desire him to send a commission of martial
law into Yorkshire, for the trial of such persons as have
assisted Charles Stuart, some of which [sic] are there in
restraint. And his Lordship is also to be put in mind, that
in case the city of Worcester, or any persons, inhabitants
of the same, who have been instruments in the betraying
of that town to Charles Stuart, do fall into his hands, that
he proceed to try all of them according to the late Aet.” "
The Earl of Derby, who had held out the Isle of Man
for the King, at this time made a descent on Lancashire,
for the purpose of creating a diversion. He had got
together 1,500 men, when Colonel Robert Lilburne (the
brother of Lieutenant-Colonel John Lilburne), with not
half that number, fell upon him near Wigan. After a
hot dispute, for near an hour, the Earl's forces were routed.
The Earl himself was wounded, but escaped and fled, to
seek refuge in the royal army at Worcester. The Lord Wid-
drington and 80 officers and persons of quality were slain.
Four hundred prisoners were taken, of whom many were
officers and gentlemen. Three cloaks with stars of the
Earl of Derby, his George and Garter, and other valuables,
were taken. The Parliament ordered £500 to Colonel
Lilburne, £200 per annum as a mark of honour for his
faithful services, and £100 to his lieutenant, that brought
the news from him; and thanks next “Lord’s-day in the
London churches for the surrender of Stirling Castle and the
defeat of the Earl of Derby,” and prayers “for a blessing
upon the Parliament’s forces, now near an engagement.””
* Order Book of the Council of ordered to Colonel Mackworth a chain
State, August 29, 1651 (afternoon), of gold with a medal, as a mark of
MS. State Paper Office. their favour “for his faithful and
* Whitelock, August 29–30, 1651.-- gallant refusal of the King's summons
About the same time, the Parliament to render Shrewsbury Castle.”—Ibid,
182 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. X.
The Council of State relaxed not their exertions. On
Tuesday, the 2nd of September, they wrote to the Commis-
sioners of Yorkshire, to hasten their forces towards Colonel
Lilburne; to Sir Arthur Haselrig, to send some forces into
Scotland, to prevent the levies of the enemy; and they re-
ferred to the Committee for the Admiralty aletter of Colonel
Blake, from aboard the Victory in the Downs, dated the
day before (September 1, 1651). On Wednesday the
3rd of September 1651, the day on which was fought the
Battle of Worcester, much business of various kinds—some
of it of great importance—was transacted by the Council
of State; the numbers present in the morning being 19,
in the afternoon. 20. But many members of the Council of
State were at Worcester—Scot and Salwey and Lord Grey
of Groby being there, besides the military officers, Crom-
Of the minutes
of their proceedings on that day I will mention two as
especially deserving of attention. The first is this: “That
thanks be returned to the sick and maimed soldiers living
about this town, for their free offer to be a guard to the
Parliament; and to let them know that, through the good-
ness of God, the state of affairs is such at present that
they have not need of any other guards than what are
already appointed to that service.”
well, Fleetwood, Harrison, and others.
same date. On August 27, the Coun-
cil of State made the following order:
—“That Mr. Alderman Allein [who
was a member of the Council of State,
and then present] do prepare a chain
of gold and a medal [he was, I sup-
pose, a jeweller and goldsmith—one
of Denzil Holles's “mean tradesmen.”]
for Colonel Mackworth, to the value of
£100, in pursuance of an Order of
Parliament.”—Order Book of the Coun-
cil of State, Wednesday, August 27,
1651, MS, State Paper Office. On Sat-
urday, August 30, the Council of State
ordered, “That Lord-Commissioner
Whitelock be desired to report to the
Parliament the letter from Colonel
Lilburne, and also the narrative pre-
pared of the success of the forces of
the Commonwealth in Scotland and
England, in pursuance of an Order
of Parliament.”—Ibid. Saturday, Au-
gust 30, 1651.
* Ibid. Tuesday, September 2, 1651.
* Ibid. Wednesday, September 3,
1651.

1651.] “THE BUSINESS OF THE DUKE OF LORRAINE.” 183
The other minute is a very remarkable one, and confirms
what I have before stated—that foreign nations were eagerly
watching the issue of the present attempt of the Stuarts
and their adherents, with a view to seize any favour-
able Opportunity of crushing the English Commonwealth.
The minute states that “the Council have received infor-
mation of some designs from Holland to land foreign
forces on the coast of Suffolk; ” and they order letters to
be written to the Commissioners of Norfolk and Suffolk,
to furnish between them one regiment of foot to the guard
of those parts, and Suffolk to send one troop of horse; and
to Colonel Wauton and Colonel Jermie, to desire them to
take especial care of that part of the coast." On the fol-
lowing day (Thursday, the 4th of September, 1651), they
order a letter to be written to Colonel Blake, to give him
an account of the state of affairs at Worcester; to acquaint
him with the intelligence concerning the coast of Suffolk,
and to desire him to give Order that a fitting strength
On the day
after that—namely, Friday, the 5th of September—there is
of ships may be applied to those parts.”
* Order Book of the Council of
State, Wednesday, September 3, 1651,
MS. State Paper Office.—I give these
two minutes in full: “That a letter be
written to Colonel Wauton and Colonel
Jermie, to desire them to take especial
care of the safety of the Island of
Lothingland; to let them know the
Council have received information of
some designs from Holland to land
foreign forces there, and therefore
have thought fit to write to the Com-
missioners of Norfolk and Suffolk, to
furnish between them one complete
regiment of foot to the guard of the
island, and Suffolk to furnish one
troop of horse; to desire them to con-
fer with the Commissioners of the two
counties concerning the business, and
to give orders for the marching of the
forces.”—“That a letter be written to
the Commissioners of Norfolk and
Suffolk, to furnish between them one
complete regiment of foot to the guard
of the Isle of Lothingland, and Suffolk to
send one troop of horse.” By the “Isle
of Lothingland ’’ is here meant the
Hundred of Lothingland, the part of
Suffolk, nearest to Yarmouth, on the
border of Norfolk. There are various
subsequent minutes, which show that
the Council had reason to expect that
some attempts would be made to land
forces on the coast near Yarmouth.-
Ibid. July 2, 1652; July 14, 1652.
* Ibid. Thursday, September 4, 1651,
184 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. X-
====. ---as----------------------
-
#his remarkable minute: “That the injunction of secrecy
laid upon the business of the Duke of Lorraine be
taken off. * *
I earnestly hope that the fullness with which I have, in
this chapter, given the proceedings of the Council of State,
as recorded in their own minutes, may not have appeared
tedious. And when it is considered that the occasion was
the actual invasion of England by an army from Scotland,
under the King of Scots, and the expected invasion by
another army from Dunkirk and Ostend under the Duke
of Lorraine, it will be admitted that all the details of the
preparations made, by the English Government of the year
1651, to meet such a crisis must form a study both in-
teresting and instructive to the English people. It is
no compliment to any Government to say of it, that -
it is a better Government than the Government of
Charles II., or indeed than the Government of any of the
Stuarts. But we have the means of comparing the
Government of this Council of State of 1651 with an Eng-
lish Government, in circumstances so far similar as regarded
danger from powerful foreign enemies—the Government,
namely, of Queen Elizabeth in 1588, and the two or three
preceding years. The fullness with which Mr. Motley has
given the proceedings of the English Government of that
time, from original records, enables us to compare it with
the Government of the Council of State of the Parliament
of the Commonwealth. And if the Government of the
Commonwealth be pronounced to be a sort of despotism as
well as the Government of Elizabeth, the despotism of the
Commonwealth must also be pronounced to be a despotism
that evinced a great genius for government, while the
* Order Book of the Council of State, Friday, September 5, 1651, MS.
State Paper Office. -
1651.] THE GOVERNMENTS OF 1588 AND OF 1651. 185
despotism of Elizabeth must be pronounced to be a des–
potism that evinced no genius for government at all.
To pass over the indecent exhibitions in Elizabeth of a
temper at Once violent, Savage, and capricious, all her
proceedings in the affair of the Netherlands and Spain;
her violent and vituperative language to the States of the
Netherlands; her negotiations with Parma, in which she
was so signally duped; her tardy and inefficient preparations
for the Spanish invasion; her treatment of the poor men
she sent from England as soldiers to the Netherlands—
whom, by her inhuman neglect, she changed from brave
soldiers into brigands, or famishing half-naked vagabonds,
and many of whom, maimed and wounded, begged their
way back to England, and even at the very gates of the
palace of the “good Queen Bess, the mother of her people,”
begged for a morsel of bread in vain—displayed as great a
want of real political ability as of humanity: and formed
the strongest contrast with the statesmen of the Common-
wealth, whose despotism, if despotism it is to be called,
was, as compared with such despotism as that of Elizabeth
Tudor, a humane, an energetic, and a sagacious despo-
tism. Its humanity was shown by its provision for the wel-
fare of its soldiers and sailors, as well as in its anxious care
to protect the people from any possible military outrage:
ordering that in their march their soldiers “shall quarter
in inns and alehouses only, and not in private men’s
houses; and in case of necessity, where there are not
inns or alehouses, that they agree with people where they
come to quarter, and duly pay for what they have.”"
* Order Book of the Council of very different from the estimate taken
State, February 21, 1653, MS. State of them by either the Tudors or the
Paper Office.—The concluding words Stuarts, with whom the English people
of the above order are also indicative were “the rude and rascal commons:”
of an estimate of the people of England, “And that the Parliament, if they
186 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. X.
=
Queen Elizabeth's reputation for ability must have been
obtained by the talent, which she really displayed, as a
speaker and writer. Her speeches certainly have the show
of talent—even of sagacity. And, as compared with the
Stuarts, she may be looked upon as a ruler of even some
practical ability. But when compared with that of the
statesmen of the Commonwealth, her Government ap-
pears, on a close and minute examination, to be at once
imperious and feeble: and the ruler who appointed Robert
Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to oppose such a general as
Alexander Farnese, must be regarded as, while by such
delegation of her office admitting her own incapacity to
command armies, also incapable of selecting those who
could. No one who reads the evidence can refuse to agree
with Mr. Motley, in his conclusion respecting the attempted
invasion of England by Spain in 1588, that “very little
credit can be conscientiously awarded to the diplomatic or
the military efforts of the Queen’s Government;” and with
the opinion of Roger Williams, cited by Mr. Motley, that
“miracles alone had saved England on that occasion from
perdition.” But as miracles cannot be trusted to with
safety in human affairs, the Government that needs the
aid of miracles to accomplish its first and most essential
duty—the defence from foreign invasion of the country it
professes to govern—must be pronounced to be a very bad
and a very incompetent Government.
think fit, will give order the same may
be made public, for the better satisfac-
tion of the people.” When the nobility,
who looked upon the people as little
better than the sweepings of the kennel,
and the doorkeeper of whose house
insulted even members of the House
of Commons (see Vol. I. p. 13), were
but the lackeys of the Tudors and the
Stuarts, it may be inferred that the
Tudors and the Stuarts would not look
with much respect upon those their
lackeys trampled on.
* Motley's History of the United
Netherlands, vol. ii. pp. 527, 528.
CHAPTER XI.
ANOTHER great and decisive battle was now to be added to
the list of those which have made the Severn, and its tri-
butary the Avon, famous in the English annals. For at
Evesham, on the Avon, had been fought the battle which
determined whether a Plantagenet or a De Montfort, and
at Shrewsbury, on the Severn, that which determined
whether a Plantagenet or a Percy, should rule in England:
while at Tewkesbury, where the Avon joins the Severn,
had been fought the battle so disastrous to the House of
Lancaster, where Queen Margaret and her unhappy son
Prince Edward were taken prisoners, and the latter was
savagely murdered in cold blood after the battle. And in
this civil war of the 17th century—a war far greater and
more momentous than any of the former wars—the Battle
of Edgehill, the first battle of the war, had been fought in
the Vale of the Red Horse,' through a part of which the
Avon” flows; and at Naseby, where the Avon" rises, had
* “Not far from the foot of Edgehill
was a broad plain called The Vale of
the Red Horse, a name suitable to the
colour which that day was to bestow
upon it; for there happened the greater
part of the encounter.”—May’s Hist.
of the Parliament, b. iii. ch. i.
* Washington Irving, in his “Sketch
Book,” in giving an account of his walk
from Stratford-on-Avon to Charlecot,
“through some of those scenes from
which Shakspeare must have derived
his earliest ideas of rural imagery,”
particularly describes the windings of
the Avon “through a wide and fertile
valley, called the Vale of the Red
Borse.”
* The spring which forms the source
of the Avon rises in the village of
Naseby.
188 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
been fought that battle which may be said to have deter-
mined the fate of Charles I.
As you trace the course of these two famous rivers, the
Severn and the Avon, the latter linked with associations of
another and a very different kind—with Shakspeare and
his youth, his scenery, and his burialplace—you trace
at the same time many of the great battles, which tell the
story of the struggles by which the great English people
attained that settled government, and that regulated
liberty, denied as yet to all the other nations of the world.
Eor on the Avon and the Severn were fought some of the
most decisive battles of this great Parliamentary war:
and though at Evesham Simon De Montfort “with all
his peerage fell,” his cause did not perish with him; for
he had before won the great Battle of Lewes, and, as the
fruit of that battle, had founded Representative Government
in England, thence to spread in the course of time over
the world. He may thus be truly said to have achieved,
if ever man achieved, something that is more than a vain
shadow—something truly excellent and great :
Something, indeed, that may for ever live
In honour where'er man is most divine.
The length of the course of the Avon, to its junction
with the Severn, may be estimated at about 100 miles.
The whole length of the course of the Severn, from its
source in Montgomeryshire to the Bristol Channel, is
about 200 miles. And it would be difficult to name any
rivers in the world associated with events of greater his-
torical importance than these two English rivers. The
horrors of war are a topic easy to dilate upon. But he
who studies carefully the history of all those sanguinary
conflicts on the banks of these two. English rivers may,
1651.] THE EXING'S ARRIVAL AT WORCESTER. 189
when any voice is raised to say that those fields were
bedeved with blood in vain, and that man should never
engage in so dangerous a game as war, be reminded of the
remark of Hotspur, made shortly before that day when he
determined
to abide a field,
Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur's name
Did seem defensible,
—“I tell you, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this
flower, safety.” For it appears that man will be satisfied
with no decision of certain great questions but the decision
of the sword.
Soon after his arrival at Worcester, King Charles, by
proclamation, commanded all from 16 to 60 years of age to
come in to him at Worcester. According to a statement
in Whitelock, none came—that is, the proclamation or sum-
mons produced no effect." According to other accounts, this
proclamation brought him about two thousand men, who
with those he had with him made in all 14,000—two thou-
sand Scots having dropped off by the way.” These 14,000
consisted, according to a statement in Whitelock, of 7,000
horse and 7,000 foot. According to the same authority, their
discipline was very strict; and some prisoners brought
before their King were courteously treated by him, and
having kissed his hand were discharged.” The Scots’ foot
were mostly Highlanders. The Lowlanders had had enough,
for the present, of their covenanted oligarchy and covenanted
King. These poor Highlanders were much harassed by
excessive marches and insufficient food; insomuch that
they “did importune the King to take pity on them,”
who in reply gave them all he ever gave in return for such
* Whitelock, August 27, 1651. * Whitelock, August 28, 1651.
* Bates, part ii. p. 122.
190 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
==
service—“good words.” The Scots proceeded to refortify
Worcester, and to that end summoned in the country to
repair the works, and that which was called the Royal
Fort."
On the morning of Thursday, the 28th of August, Crom-
well, advancing from the Evesham side, arrived before Wor-
cester. He encamped on Red Hill, about three-quarters of
a mile south-eastward of Worcester, on the London road,
having with him upwards of 30,000 men. The cotemporary
authorities say that he “came before Worcester having
about 17,000 horse and foot, with Major-General Lambert
and Major-General Harrison.” The meaning of this
statement, which is not very clear, probably is that the
forces he brought with him from Scotland, and those under
Lambert and Harrison, amounted altogether to about 17,000
horse and foot. But, in consequence of the exertions of
the Council of State—which have been described in the
preceding pages, on the authority of their own minutes—
bodies of militia were flocking to him from all parts.
Bates, who is not a very great authority, says that “those
who from all parts came flocking in, made up an army (if
some be not mistaken in their reckoning) of fourscore
thousand men and more, whom he posts round the city of
Worcester.”” Hobbes says that Cromwell, joining with
the new levies, environed Worcester with 40,000 men.”
Worcester is on the left bank of the Severn, with a
* Letter from Lieutenant-General
Eleetwood, in Cromwelliana, p. 110;
and in Whitelock (the substance of
letters from Lieutenant-General Fleet-
wood), August 26, 1651.-Under the
same date, in Whitelock, it is stated
that they have very few English horse
among them ; their foot Highlanders.
That a messenger from the army brought
an account that the Lord-General, the
Lieutenant-General, the Major-Gen-
erals, and the Lord Grey of Groby, met
at Warwick. -
* See Proc. in Parl. (August 28 to
September 4), in Cromwelliana, p. 110.
* Bates, part ii. p. 123.
* Hobbes's Behemoth, p. 282: Lon-
don, 1682.
1651.] OPERATIONS OF LAMBERT'S TROOPS. 191
suburb on the other side of the river, connected with the
city by a bridge. Fort Royal, mentioned above, is on the
south-east of the city, towards Cromwell’s lines. At
Upton, seven miles below Worcester, there was a stone
bridge over the Severn. Colonel Massey had broken down
this bridge, but had accidentally left a foot-plank from one
arch to another; and lay secure with 250 horse in the
neighbouring town, leaving no guard to defend the pass.
On the morning of Thursday, the 28th, the same day on
which Cromwell came before Worcester, Lambert marched,
with a party of horse and dragoons, from Evesham to-
wards Upton. The dragoons,” straddling upon the plank,
passed over, one after another, and then fired upon the
enemy in the town, who had taken the alarm ; while the
horse partly forded, partly swam, their horses across the
river, about pistol-shot from the bridge. The dragoons,
about eighteen in number, then advanced, and took pos-
session of the church, upon a little hill near the bridge-
foot. The enemy drew up to the church, and fired their
pistols, and thrust their swords in at the windows; but the
dragoons fired upon them, killed three or four of their
men, and eight or nine of their horses, and took one
prisoner, who was shot in the arm. By this time a small
party of Lambert’s horse were come up, at whose ap-
pearance the enemy faced about without a charge. Lam-
bert then sent for Fleetwood, who, being four miles behind
with his brigade, mounted about 300 of Colonel Cobbet’s
* Bates (part ii. p. 124) makes the a good illustration of the primary
strange blunder—which several modern character and use of the sort of troops
writers have copied, to the inextricable called “dragoons,” showing precisely
confusion of themselves and their the sort of service for which they were
readers—of placing Upton above instead fitted and intended. As to the differ-
of below Worcester. - ence between “horse” and “dragoons,”
* The operations here described are see Vol. I, pp. 44, 45.
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H --> -- - - - - - --- - --- -
192 CoMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
foot behind troopers, and hastened to the bridge, the rest
of his brigade following. In the meantime Lambert
used all diligence to make up the bridge for the party to
march over, he and Major-General Deane themselves
working at it; and receiving no interruption from the
enemy, the work was speedily accomplished, and the
troops all marched over. In illustration of the small
execution at that time done by firearms, it may be men-
tioned that, although at least forty carbines were fired
within half pistol-shot at Massey, “who brought up the
rear of his party very stoutly,” when they faced about, the
only result was that Massey’s horse was killed, and him-
self badly wounded in the hand. ...
By the end of August, Cromwell’s forces had gotten
within half musket-shot of the enemy’s works, on the
south side of Worcester, and his cannon played daily into
the city, in which the enemy had planted some great guns.
On Sunday, the 31st of August, the Earl of Derby went
wounded into Worcester, having with him not above thirty
horse left of all his levies in Lancashire. The King cf
Scots, according to a cotemporary account, seeing all his
hopes in the Earl of Derby frustrated, would have marched
away with his horse; whereupon his infantry began to
mutiny, protesting their horse should not desert them,
but, since they must suffer, they should all fare alike. At
length, with fair words and large promises of supplies
from the King and their officers, they were somewhat ap-
peased.” - -
On the right or west side of the Severn, the River Teme
runs into it about three miles below Worcester, and four
* King's Pamphlets, large 4to, No. Bates, part ii. p. 124.
54, article 15. The same account—a * King's Pamphlets, large 4to, No.
special express from Major-General 54, article 14; Cromwelliana, pp. 111,
Lambert—in Cromwelliana, p. 111; 112.
1651.] BATTLE OF WORCESTER. 193
miles above Upton. On this River Teme, at Powick, about
a quarter of a mile from the place where it joins the
Severn, there was a bridge. This bridge the Scots took
possession of on Monday the 1st of September. Crom-
well, having resolved on an attack on Wednesday the 3rd
of September, the day on which the Battle of Dunbar
had been fought twelve months before, ordered Fleetwood
to advance in the morning with his brigade from Upton.
The plan was (and preparations had been made accord-
ingly) to lay a bridge of boats across the Severn close to
the mouth of the Teme, and also a bridge of boats across
the Teme within pistol-shot of the other bridge; and, by
this means, to connect the two parts of his army on the
two banks of the Severn. Accordingly, the forces under
Fleetwood began their march from Upton, between 5 and 6
o'clock on Wednesday morning, September 3. But, in
consequence of some delays, probably connected with
the bringing-up of the boats for the making of the bridges,
they did not reach the River Teme till between 2 and 3
in the afternoon. The boats came up much about the same
time, and a bridge was presently made over the Severn,
and another over the Teme. The right wing of Fleet-
wood’s forces then crossed the bridge of boats over the
Teme at its junction with the Severn, while the left wing
attacked the bridge at Powick, a quarter of a mile up the
Teine. The dispute here lasted a long time, and was very
hot, the Scots having drawn out a considerable body of
their forces to oppose Fleetwood here. Cromwell led
some regiments of horse and foot, across the bridge of
boats, over the Severn at the mouth of the Teme, to act in
conjunction with Fleetwood’s forces, “His Excellency
leading them in person, and being the first man that
set foot on the enemy’s ground.” The ground was so
VOL. II. O
194 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
encumbered with hedges that the horse had not much liberty
to act. The Scots on that side of the Severn having been
driven into Worcester, then drew out all their forces that
remained from the conflict on the right bank of the
Severn, and made a furious attack upon Cromwell’s forces
on the other side of the river.
Cromwell had recrossed the bridge of boats, and was
ready to receive them. Although the Scots at first gained
some advantages—forced some of Cromwell’s troops to re-
treat with disorder, and made on that side (to use Cromwell’s
own words) “a very considerable fight with us for three
hours’ space,” ” in the end they were totally beaten, and
driven back into the town. Fort Royal was then taken,
and their own cannon were turned against them. The
fight and carnage were then continued in the streets of
Worcester, till the Scottish foot were all killed or taken.
The Duke of Hamilton had his thigh broken with a shot,
and died four days after the battle. The King and David
Teslie, with most of the horse, and several noblemen
and persons of note, fled. Many noblemen and persons
of rank were taken. The King and some few of the
cavalry escaped. The wounded Earl of Derby was taken,
tried for treason against the State, and executed at Bolton.
The Earls of Lauderdale and Cleveland and others were
sent to the Tower.
Clarendon and other English writers have represented
the Scottish army as making little resistance at this Battle
of Worcester. Yet Cromwell’s own words testify that the
Scots fought so well, that for a time it was doubtful
* Cromwell to the Speaker, Septem- Newspapers in Cromwelliana, pp. 114
ber 3 and 4, 1651; Letter from Robert —116.
Stapylton, 10 at night, September 3, 4 Cromwell to the Speaker, Septem-
1651, in Cromwelliana, pp. 112, 113. ber 3, 1651, 10 at night.
1651.] TOTAL DEFEAT OF THE KING'S ARMY. 195
on which side success would fall. “This battle was
fought with various success for some hours, but still hope-
ful on your part, and in the end became a complete
victory.” “Indeed, this hath been a very glorious mercy,
and as stiff a contest, for four or five hours, as ever I have
seen.” And again, “indeed it was a stiff business,” and
“the slain are very many ” of the enemy, “and must
needs be so, because the dispute was long and very near
at hand; and often at push of pike, and from one de-
fence to another.” He does “not think the Parliamen-
tary forces have lost two hundred men.” And Cromwell
uses that remarkable expression :-‘‘The dimensions of
this mercy are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I
know, a crowning mercy.” “ But, as Sir Walter Scott
says, well or ill disputed, the day was totally lost. Three
thousand men were slain in the fight, ten thousand were
taken prisoners; and their fate formed a melancholy con-
trast to that of His sacred Majesty, and his councillors,
the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Lauderdale, and
other noble persons, who had dragged those poor men
from their homes and families, and who lived and flourished
in after-years, “a spectacle for the angels.”
The covenanted King of the Scots—exhausted, it is said,
by want of rest, having been, according to Clarendon,
upon his horse most part of the night—retired a little
before noon to his lodging, to eat and refresh himself,
under the impression that the enemy meant to make no
attempt that night.” He had fallen asleep, and slept till
the most terrible of all earthly sounds, that of his flying
1 Cromwell to the Speaker, Septem- * Ibid. September 4, 1651.
ber 4, 1651. * Ibid,
2 Ibid. September 3, 1651, 10 at * Clarendon's Hist, vol. vi. pp. 510,
might. 511 : Oxford, 1826.
O 2
196 COMMONWEALTH: ‘OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
troops driven pellmell through the streets of Worcester—
the sound of rapid footsteps, like that of a great river
bursting a barrier—footsteps rendered swift by fear, but
unsteady on streets slippery with blood—the shouts of the
victors, and the cries for quarter of the vanquished—broke
his slumbers. He started up, mounted his horse (which
stood ready at the door), and fled instantly, surpassing even
David Leslie in the faculty of flight. He immediately took
his natural place here, which place was the van in flight;
as that of Robert Bruce, as whose representative he claimed
to be King of the Scots, had been the rear in retreat, and the
van in onset. The first time that day that this “heir of a
hundred kings.” was seen by the enemy, was as the fore-
most of his cavalry in headlong flight. “They make no re-
sistance when any of ours overtake them,” says the officer
in command of the pursuing cavalry—a man whose back no
enemy ever saw—“but ride post and in great confusion,
the King being the foremost.” ". . .
It is remarkable that this is the first time the King is
mentioned by any of Cromwell’s officers as having been
seen during the affair. He is before Imentioned, indeed, in
these words: “Their King (it is said) went out very
meanly, with only 12 horse” ” And here it is only, “it is
said.” If the King had shown himself, much more if he had
exposed himself to danger, would Cromwell’s despatches
and the other letters from the army have said nothing
of it? Clarendon, after saying that “a little before noon
| Letter from Major-General Har-
rison, in Whitelock, p. 508.-The
course and extent of Harrison's pur-
suit are indicated in the following
minute of September 12: “That the
letters from Major-General Harrison
and the Committee of Yorkshire, with
the list of the prisoners enclosed, be
reported to the Parliament.”—Order
Book of the Council of State, Septem-
ber 12, 1651, MS. State Paper Office.
* Cromwelliana, p. 115. -
1651.] THE KING'S CONDUCT IN THE BATTLE. H.97
he retired to his lodging,” goes on to relate that “he had
not been there near an hour when the alarm came ; and
though he presently mounted his horse, which was ready at
the door, before he came out of the city he met the whole
body of his horse running in so great fear that he could
not stop them.” Lord Clarendon has also the courage to
assert, that “in no other part, except where Middleton was
hurt and Duke Hamilton’s leg broke with a shot, was there
resistance made ; but such a general consternation possessed
the whole army, that the rest of the horse fled, and all the
foot threw down their arms before they were charged.” "
Now, it has been shown that the battle commenced to-
wards 3 P.M., and lasted, according to Cromwell’s own
words, “as stiff a contest for four or five hours as ever he
had seen.” But, according to Clarendon, the battle ended
about two hours before it began. Clarendon then suddenly,
without any intimation that the King had left the town to
fight the enemy, begins his next sentence thus: “When
the King came back into the town, he found a good body of
horse, which had been persuaded to make a stand; ” and
after in vain attempting to persuade them to face the
enemy, and “staying till very many of the enemy’s horse
were entered the town, he was persuaded to withdraw him-
self; and though the King could not get a body of horse to
fight, he could have too many to fly with him.”” This
narrative, though constructed with the art of an unscru-
pulous advocate, is incoherent, and, as its very incoherency
proves, is manifestly untrue, except that part of it which
states that the King was in his lodging while his troops
were fighting. " . . - -
It was a feat of advocacy more rash than dexterous in
Clarendon's Hist, vol. vi. p. 512: Oxford, 1826. Ibid. vol. vi. pp. 512, 513.
198 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
Clarendon to attempt to prove that Charles was a brave
man, and his army an army of cowards. He knew, indeed,
the importance of what he sought to prove; he knew that
mankind will overlook, will bear with, if they will not
forgive, many things in a brave man which they will
visit severely upon a coward. But it was particularly hard
upon the men who composed the army with which Charles
marched from Scotland to Worcester to be treated in this
way. For if that army had not had among them some
men unusually brave, such a march would never have been
attempted; for they well knew, and they had had good
cause to know, the formidable qualities of the troops they
would have to encounter. -
Dr. George Bates, who in the titlepage of his book is
called “principal physician to King Charles I. and King
Charles II.,” and is also said, in the “Preface by a Person
of Quality,” to have been physician to Oliver Cromwell—
an assertion which, as has been shown from the Order
Book of the Council of State, is so far true that Dr. Bates
was one of three physicians sent by the Council into Scotland
to give Cromwell advice for the recovery of his health—
states that the King, with a Council of War, viewing the
enemies from the high steeple of the cathedral-church,
perceived them upon their march towards the town; that
all presently arm, and the King himself marches out to
the defence of Powick Bridge, and to hinder the enemies
passing over the bridge of boats. Without specifying any
of the King's exploits at Powick Bridge, or saying why
His Majesty left it, Dr. Bates begins his next sentence by
suddenly informing us, that “the King was scarcely got
back into the town,” when everything went wrong in
the defence of the bridge. And in the next sentence, by a
turn equally sudden and remarkable, he informs us that
1651.] FALSE PANEGY RIC ON THE KING. 199
“whilst these things were acting ”—that is, whilst the
King's forces were losing Powick Bridge, in consequence of
the King’s Majesty having “got back into the town,”—“the
Ring’s Majesty, turning towards the east side of the town”
resolves to hazard a battle.” The royal panegyrist and
physician then proceeds to state that the King, with a con-
siderable body of foot but a small number of horse (“for,”
he says, “the Scottish cavalry scarce budged”) marched
against the enemy at Perry-wood, “with a most undaunted
and present mind,” being followed by the Dukes of
Hamilton and Buckingham, and Sir Alexander Forbes, at
the head of his foot; that at the first charge he beat the
van, and made himself master of the artillery; but after-
wards, “ though with wonderful sagacity he gave orders,
in the heat and confusion of the fight, faced the greatest
dangers with a high and steady mind, not to be matched
by others, and with his own hand did many brave actions,
and gave illustrious proofs of his personal valour even in
the judgment of his enemies;* yet being overpowered by
fresh men, whom Cromwell in great numbers sent in, he
thought it best, that he might reserve himself for better
fortune, to retreat in time, and save himself in the town;
that he then used all manner of persuasions to encourage
the soldiers to renew the engagement; till, the danger
growing greater and greater, by St. Martin’s Gate he went
out to the horse, commanded by David Leslie, being
almost entire, and directed his course towards Barbon
Bridge, earnestly entreating the horse to take courage and
hasten to the assistance of the foot, who were put to
utmost extremity.”
If the other account be true—and Clarendon, if as
| Bates, part ii. p. 125. shown above.
* The falsehood of this has been * Bates, part ii. pp. 125, 126,
200 COMMONWEALTH oF ENGLAND, [CHAP. XI
regardless of the truth, was likely to be at least as well
informed as Bates—that Charles, during the obstinate and
sanguinary, conflict in which the unfortunate Scots were
shedding their blood for this phantom King, whom they
regarded as the representative of their great Robert Bruce,
was “in his lodging eating,” and afterwards “refreshing
himself” with sleep, and that it was the noise of the flying
army, driven pellmell into the town, that broke the royal
slumbers, the only part of this romance of Bates which
has in it a shadow of truth, is that Charles then joined the
cavalry, and “ was the foremost in flight.” . . . . .
There is a reason for taking more notice of this book of
Bates than its intrinsic value merits: for this mendacious
description of the King’s heroism at the Battle of Worcester
is a sort of measure of the degradation to which the
Restoration reduced public opinion and everything else
in England. The second part of Bates’s book was written
after the Restoration, with what object is evident enough
from the book itself. It is always the last proof of de-
basement in a nation, when the corruption of the Govern-
ment awards to men who have not risked their lives in
battle or in the public service the honours that only belong
to those who have. Rome had fallen upon evil days when
Caligula drew up his army on the seashore nearlboulogne,
under pretence of invading Britain; and, having with
great parade disposed his warlike engines, ordered his
soldiers to gather the sea-shells, and fill their helmets and
the skirts of their clothes, saying “ these were the spoils
of the ocean, fit to be deposited in the Capitol;” and then,
by letters to Rome, ordered preparations to be made for a
triumph that should exceed in magnificence, all former
triumphs. In like manner had England fallen upon evil
days, when a man, who performed the part neither of a
1651.] SCOTCH STUDENTS AMONG THE PRISONERS. 201
great commander nor a good soldier, was held up to public
view as having performed the part of both ; while the
brave but unfortunate men, who shed their blood for a
worthless, and incapable young man, were held up to un-
merited obloquy... . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
When it is considered that the students at the Scottish
Universities were usually very young, of the age of boys
rather than of young men, it appears, from the following
minute of the Council of State, that the zeal of the Scottish
Royalist gentry, in favour of their Stuart Kings, for whom
they from first to last shed so much of their blood in vain,
led them to take with them in this disastrous expedition
some of their sons who were mere boys. For here was a
mere boy, a student at the University of St. Andrews, who
had accompanied his father, and shared with him the hard-
ships of the long march, the perils of Worcester, and after-
wards imprisonment:- - -
“Upon the reading of the petition of Sir Adam Hepburne
of Hombee, for himself and his two sons, John Cockbourne
of Ormestone, and Thomas Hepburne, student at St.
Andrews in Scotland, it is ordered that the said Thomas
Hepburne shall have liberty to return into Scotland to
follow his studies there, he first taking the engagement;
and that Sir Adam Hepburne of Hombee and John Cock-
burne [sic] of Ormestone shall have the liberty of the city
and the places within the late lines of communication—
they entering into bonds, in the sum of £1,000 apiece for
themselves, and £500 each two sureties, upon the usual
terms.” • * - - : . . . - . .
On the 10th of September the Parliament issued a
* Order Book of the Council of Hombee, for himself and his two sons],
State, Thursday, March 25, 1652 MS. State Paper Office. . . . - -
[Petition of Sir Adam Hepburne of , - . . *
202 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
=
proclamation, offering a reward of £1,000 “for the discovery
and apprehending of Charles Stuart, and other traitors,
his adherents and abettors.” A month passed, however,
and Charles was still uncaptured. On Monday the 13th of
October 1651, the Council of State made the following
order, which appears to me to show (what before I consi-
dered doubtful) that they really desired to apprehend him :
“That letters be written to all the ports, to make strict
search of all persons that shall attempt to go out of the
land, especially such as are in disguise, to prevent the
going out of Charles Stuart, who we are informed is still
in England; to let them know that £1,000 is appointed by
Act of Parliament for them who shall take him.” Crom-
well, who did not attend the Council of State after the 2nd
till the 11th of October (his name not being in the list of
those present at the Council on any of the intervening
days), was present on this day, the 13th of October. It may
thence be inferred that Cromwell really desired the appre-
hension of Charles. But it seems to have been better, both
for Cromwell and the Council of State, that Charles escaped,
than that they should have had either the keeping of him
prisoner, or the repetition of the scene of the 30th of Jan-
uary 1643 in front of Whitehall. -
After many adventures, which have been variously related,
some of which are described in the narrative of a Mr.
Whitgreaves,” at whose house he was secreted two or three
days—a narrative which presents a strong contrast to the
fictions of Sir Walter Scott’s “Woodstock,” and represents
Charles in a far better light than the romance does; there
* Order Book of the Council of cently printed copy of this MS. in the
State, Monday, October 13, 1651, MS. “Westminister Review,” vol. v. pp. 432
State Paper Office. –434, and the “Retrospective Review,”
* See an extract from a then re- No. 20.
1651.] ESCAPE OF THE KING TO FRANCE. 203
being, instead of insolent airs and attempts on the honour
of his host’s daughter, a very respectful condescension
towards his host and his family, and a full sense of his
forlorn condition on the part of the King—Charles found
means to hire a vessel on the coast of Sussex, and landed
at Havre-de-Grâce. On the 28th of October, an extract of
two letters from Paris was published, licensed by the Clerk
of the Parliament, and setting forth : “That on the 19th
the Scots’ King arrived there, and was met by the Duke of
Orleans not far from that city: that his Highness conducted
him to the Louvre, whither the late Queen, his mother,
repaired presently after from Chaliot, where she had been
erecting a nunnery : that the King gave the company a full
narrative of all the particulars of what happened atthe fight
at Worcester, threwout some reproachful words against the
Scots, put some scurrilous language on the Presbyterian
party in England, and boasted much of his own valour.
That he told them how he slipt out of Worcester, and how
near he was of being taken there—first in the fort, and
after in his chamber : how he disguised himself, and went
from county to county, and what shift he made for
victuals and lodging; sometimes being driven to beg a
piece of bread and meat, and ride with bread in one hand
and meat in the other, and sometimes setting a guard
about a little cottage, while he rested there until the morn-
ing : as also his being in London, and the manner of his
passing disguised through several counties in England,
till he made his escape.”
The Council of State was much occupied for some time
with the disposal of the prisoners. The noblemen and the
superior officers, such as Lieutenant-General David Leslie,
Parl. Hist, vol. iii. p. 1375.
204 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. . . [CHAP. XI.
were committed to the Tower of London—the persons next
in rank to Windsor Castle. The Order Book of the Council
of State, under date 16th September 1651, contains a list of
knights, colonels, &c., committed to Windsor Castle. The
following minutes of 29th September relate to the other
prisoners of lower rank or of no rank :- . . . . . . . . .
“That it be referred to the Committee for Prisoners to
examine whether Chelsey College belongs to the State, or
to particular persons: if to the State they are to make use
of it; if to particular persons, they are to treat with them,
that it may be made use of for the accommodating of some
of the Scots prisoners.” “That it be referred to the same
Committee to make use of the church near the ground
[Tothill Fields] where now they are, or of the pesthouse, or
of any other place for the lodging of the sick and wounded
men of the Scots prisoners; and the said Committee is to
speak with the Martial-General about the providing of
straw and other necessaries for the lodging of the Scots
prisoners.” - . . . . . . . . .
It is impossible to say what proportion of the Scots
prisoners was shipped to the plantations. A doubt may
even be raised, as will be shown presently, whether any of
them were so disposed of, although undoubtedly the Council
at one time contemplated such a proceeding. It is, however,
quite certain that they were not all so disposed of, either
after the Battle of Dunbar, or after that of Worcester.
There are in the Order Book minutes respecting the employ-
ment of some of those of Dunbar in the coal-mines about
Newcastle, and of others in agriculture in England. And
with regard to those of Worcester, the Council of State, on
the 1st of October 1651, made an order: “That 1,000 of
* Order Book of the Council of State, Monday, September 29, 1651, MS.
State Paper Office. -
1651.] DISPOSAL OF THE PRISONERS. 205
the Scottish prisoners be delivered to the use of the under-
taker for the draining of the Fens, upon condition that, if
ten men of each hundred do escape from them, they do
then forfeit, for every man escaping above the aforesaid
number, the sum of £10.” And again, on the 9th of Oe-
tober, there is this order: “That so many of the Scottish
prisoners, private soldiers, as are in Tothill Fields, and also
at York, and are sound and fit for labour, be delivered over
for the draining of the Fens.” - .
It appears, from the following minutes, that some of the
English prisoners were kept at St. James’s. On the 16th
of October Colonel Berkstead is ordered to choose twenty
out of the English private soldiers, now prisoners at St.
James’s, to be proceeded against by a Council of War or
Court Martial ; the Court Martial to be held on Thursday,
25th of October, in the Court of Star Chamber, at West-
minster, by 9 o'clock in the forenoon.” And, from the
following minute, it appears that steps were certainly taken
for transporting to the plantations some of the Scots pri-
soners. On the 25th of October the Council of State ordered,
“That the Committee for Prisoners do, upon usual security,
give license for the transporting of some Scots prisoners to
the Bermudas.”4 • r -
There are various orders of the Council of State respecting
the treatment of the prisoners. An allowance was ordered
of 2d. per diem to each of the Scots prisoners, “for provision
of victuals,” at Chester, and of 2%d. per diem in London.
There are orders on the 16th of September for 112 bags of
biscuits for the Scots prisoners, at 16s. per cwt.; for payment
of the “bakers and cheesemongers, which have furnished
provisions to the Scots prisoners, at £56. 5s. per diem and
Order Book of the Council of 2 Ibid. October 9, 1651.
State, October 1, 1651, MS. State 8 Hºrid. October 16, 1651.
Paper Office. 4 Ibid. October 21, 1651.
206 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
upwards; and that a warrant be issued to the Master and
Wardens of the Company of Chirurgeons, to appoint some
skilful chirurgeons to dress constantly such of the Scots
prisoners as are wounded.” The humanity of this last
order would be creditable to the Council, were it not for its
lateness—thirteen days after the battle. But there may have
been reasons for this apparent delay which we do not know.
On the same day, the 16th of September, the Lord-General
[Cromwell] is “desired to give order that the Earl of Lauder-
dale, Sir David Leslie, Lieutenant-General, Lieutenant-Gen-
eral David Middleton, Sir William Fleming, Sir David Cun-
ningham, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir William Hart, Sir William
Douglas, now prisoners at Chester, be brought up in safe
custody, under a sufficient guard, to London.” On the 1st
of October it is ordered, “That Ralph Delavall, of Seaton De-
lavall, in the county of Northumberland, Esquire, desiring
leave to visit the Earl of Leven,” now prisoner in the
Tower, in order to supply him with some necessaries, be
permitted, according to his said desire, to come unto the
Earl of Leven in the Tower.” And on the 3rd of October,
“Upon the motion of the Lord-General [Cromwell], it is
ordered that General Leven [the Earl of Leven] shall have
the liberty of the Tower, and that his servant may come
to him, to do him such service as is necessary to him.”
On the 11th of November, the Council of State ordered,
“That the Order of Parliament concerning the Earl of
Leven be issued to the Committee for Irish and Scottish
* Order Book of the Council of General in Scotland by the King, and
State, Tuesday, September 16, 1651, Crawford-Lindsay Lieutenant-General.
MS. State Paper Office. —Lord Leicester's Journal, p. 117;
* Ibid. same day. Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 366.
* The Earls of Leven and Crawford- * Order Book of the Council of
Lindsay, Lord Ogleby, and others, State, October 1, 1651, MS. State
had been surprised by Monk in Scot- Paper Office.
land, and sent prisoners to London. * Ibid. October 3, 1651.
The old Earl of Leven had been left
1651.] . RELEASE OF THE EARL OF LEVEN,
207
Affairs, who are to consider of what security is fit to be
taken of him for his abode at Mr. Delavall his house in
the county of Northumberland, and to report their opinions
to the Council.” On the 13th of November 1651, the ar-
rangement for enlarging the old Earl of Leven, the veteran
general of Gustavus Adolphus, from the Tower was com-
pleted : the Earl of Leven to give his parole, under his hand
and seal: Ralph Delavall, of Seaton Delavall in the county
of Northumberland, Esquire ; John Delavall, of Peter-
borough, in the county of Northampton, and John Dela-
wall of &c., recognizance of £20,000 before the Lords
Commissioners of the Great Seal: the Earl of Leven to be
confined to the said house of Seaton Delavall, or within
twelve miles thereof.” ”
On the 7th of October it is ordered, “That the Scots
prisoners in the Tower shall have liberty to write into
* Order Book of the Council of
State, November 11, 1651, MS. State
Paper Office.—On the same day there
is an order for Colonel Keith, pri-
soner in Windsor Castle, to have liberty
for three months on parole, for the
recovery of his health; the Earl of
Rothes and the Earl Mareschal of
Scotland to have each a servant allowed
to attend upon him in the Tower, pro-
vided such servant be kept a prisoner
in the Tower also. — Ibid. November
10, 1651. “That a letter be written to
the Lieutenant of the Tower, to secure
the Earl Mareschal of Scotland by
himself alone, apart from the rest, and
to keep him close prisoner in order to a
further examination.”—Ibid. Novem-
ber 11, 1651.
* Ibid. November 13, 1651.-Roger
North, in his Life of his brother the
Lord-Keeper Guilford (vol. i. p. 266,
3rd edition, London, 1819), gives an in-
teresting description of Seaton Delaval:
“From Tynemouth his Lordship, by
invitation, went to dine at Seaton
Delaval. Sir Ralph Delaval enter-
tained us exceeding well. The chief
remarkable there was a little port,
which that gentleman, with great con-
trivance and after many disappoint-
ments, made for securing small craft,
that carried out his salt and coal; and
he had been encouraged in it by King
Charles II., who made him collector
and surveyor of his own port, and no.
officer to intermeddle there. It stands
at the mouth of a rill of water, which,
running from the hills, had excavated
a great hollow in the fall as it ran.
Sir Ralph had built, or rather often
rebuilt, a pier of stone, that fenced off
the surge to the north-east, and, at
high-water, gave entrance near a little
promontory of the shore; and at low
water, the vessels lay dry upon the
rock.”
208 ... COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. . [CHAP. XI.
Scotland: the letters to be sent open to the Lieutenant of
the Tower, who, if he find they write only concerning their
own condition, shall seal the letters and deliver them to
such person as they shall appoint to carry them.” And on
the same day an order is made, “That Lieutenant-General
David Leslie, now prisoner in the Tower, shall have liberty
to have his servant come to him to attend upon him.”
And on the 3rd of December 1651, a further order was
made, “That liberty be given to the wife of Lieutenant-
General David Leslie, with two maidservants, to go in and
come out of the Tower as they shall have occasion.”
On the 17th of December 1651, the Council of State
ordered, “That the Earl of Carnwath shall have the liberty
of the Tower, to walk for the preservation of his health,”
and “That the Lord Crawford-Lindsey [sic] shall have a
servant allowed to attend upon him in the Tower; ” and
on the 24th of the same December, they ordered, “That
Sir David Leslie, Alexander Earl of Kellie, John Lord
Bargany [sic], and the Lord Oglebie, shall have the liberty
of the Tower.” -
There is a strange and painful contrast between these
indulgences, granted to the Scottish officers of rank, and
the harsh treatment of the private soldiers and the officers
below the rank of field-officers—a treatment which ap-
pears to be exactly the reverse of what justice would seem
to require, since the soldiers and the officers below field-off-
cers could not possibly have had any share in the counsels
which caused the invasion of England that led to the
Battle of Worcester. On the day following that on which
I Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. December 3, 1651. -
State, October 7, 1651, MS. State * Ibid. December 17, 1651. . .
Paper Office. - * Ibid. Wednesday, December 24,
* Ibid. same day. 1651.
1651.] DISPOSAL OF THE PRISONERS. 209
the last order above mentioned was made respecting
David Leslie (namely, on the 4th of December, 1651), an
order was made, that a Committee, composed of upwards of
20 members of the Council of State, and, including Sir
Henry Vane and the Lord-General [Cromwell], “ or any
three or more of them, shall have power to dispose to plan-
tations all the prisoners whder the degree of field-officer taken
at Worcester, or in any other place, since the invasion by
the Scots' army, as well those abroad in several garrisons
as those that are brought to London. And that they
report to the Council how they shall so dispose of them.
And that the said Committee do also report to the Council
what they conceive fit to be done with the field-officers
that are prisoners.” "
According to Wattel, it is lawful to condemn prisoners of
war to slavery only in cases which give a right to kill
them—when they have rendered themselves personally
guilty of some crime deserving of death. The ancients
used to sell their prisoners of war for slaves; but they
thought they had a right to put them to death. “In
every circumstance,”
says Wattel, “when I cannot inno-
cently take away my prisoner's life, I have no right to
make him a slave.”” As the Orders for regulating the
proceedings of the Council of State required that “nothing
of any debate or argument shall be entered into the book,
but only the result thereof declared in the vote,” we know
not on what ground this harsh measure was adopted.
But it was probably a ground similar to that which in-
duced the Czar Peter to send into Siberia all the prisoners
he took at Pultowa. Charles XII., after the Battle of
Narva, only disarmed his prisoners and set them at liberty.
1 Order Book of the Council of * Wattel's Law of Nations, b. iii.
State, December 4, 1651, MS. State ch. vii. § 152.
Paper Office.
WOL. II. P
210 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
The English Parliament might think, with the Russian
Czar, that generosity is a luxury too expensive to be
indulged in by statesmen. “The Swedish hero,” says
Wattel, “confided too much in his own generosity; the
sagacious monarch of Russia united, perhaps, too great a
degree of severity with his prudence: but necessity fur-
nishes an apology for severity, or rather throws a veil over
it altogether.” Such statesmen as Wane and Cromwell
might probably have shown that a necessity existed, had
their arguments in the Council of State been preserved.
But, as they have not been preserved, I will not attempt to
conjecture what they might have been. And I will only
add, in the words of Wattel—“I shall dwell no longer on
the subject: and, indeed, that disgrace to humanity is
happily banished from Europe.””
There is another very important minute, relating to the
Scots prisoners, made about a fortnight after that just
quoted, which, if it can be considered as comprehending
all the prisoners, and not merely those who remained after
the disposal of the others to the plantations, would speak
strongly in favour of the humane treatment of those pri-
soners by the English Parliament and Council of State.
The following is this order, made on Wednesday, 17th of
December, 1651:— -
“That it be referred to the Committee for Prisoners to
take into consideration the discharging of the Scots
prisoners remaining now in Tothill Fields and about Lon-
don, which were taken at the Battle of Worcester; and
also what allowance is fit to be made of clothing and .
money, for the enabling of them to return into their own
country, the sum of which is to be paid by Mr. Frost out
* Wattel's Law of Nations, b. iii, ch. * Ibid. § 152.
viii. § 52. '
1651.] DISPOSAL OF THE PRISONERS. 211
of the exigent moneys of the Council, and also what time
is fit to be given for their performing of the journey.” "
There is another order of the same date, “That it be
referred to the Committee for Prisoners to consider of the
disposing of such of the Scots prisoners as are now at
Newcastle, or in any other place of this nation, and report
what they think fit to be done therein.””
On the same day, the Council of State made the follow-
ing order with regard to the English prisoners taken at
the Battle of Worcester :-
“That it be referred to the Committee for Irish and
Scottish Affairs, in pursuance of an Order of Parliament of
the 28th of November, to consider of the sending of the
English prisoners, now at James House and in the Mews,
which were taken at the Battle of Worcester, over into
Ireland, there to be disposed of for the advantage of the
Commonwealth.”
The following minutes show that the former minute for
sending home some of the Scots prisoners remaining in
Tothill Fields and about London was not meant to include
those of the higher rank :—
“That Lieutenant-General Fleetwood, Colonel Blake,
Mr. Scot, Mr. Herbert, Sir William Masham, and Mr.
Nevill, or any two of them, be appointed a Committee
to consider of the disposing of the Scots prisoners now
in the Tower, to such other places of restraint, where those
that are of most consideration and best able to act anything
prejudicial, may be separated one from another, and yet
all may have the liberty of the respective prisons to
which they shall be committed.” -
* Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. same day.
State, Wednesday, December 17, 1651, * Ibid. same day.
MS. State Paper Office. * Ibid. December 24, 1651.
P 2
212 COMMONWEAITH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI. .
“That notice be given to the Lieutenant of the Tower,
that he is to take care that all those persons of quality
of the Scottish nation who have had the liberty of the
Tower granted unto them, may (notwithstanding the
said liberty given) have keepers appointed to them, to
take especial care of them, that they make not their
escape.” -
“That the Lord Wiscount Lisle be added to the Com-
mittee for Prisoners; and they desired to take care of
such of the Scottish prisoners as are now at the Mews.”
“That Major Andrew Carr and Captain James Keyth
[sic], now prisoners in Chelsey College, be permitted to
go into Scotland for four or five months on their parols,
on behalf of the rest of the prisoners in Chelsey College,
to fetch them some relief from their friends, for their
better accommodation and subsistence during their im-
prisonment here.” - -
On the same day the Council of State also made the
following order: “That the seven inferior servants of the
Scotch King, which [sic] are now prisoners in the Fleet,
be forthwith discharged, upon their taking the engage-
ment, and giving their own bonds, that they will act
nothing prejudicial to the Commonwealth.”
On the 1st of July 1652, the Council of State ordered,
“That the private soldiers of the Scottish nation who are
now prisoners at Durham and Gloucester be released, and
permitted to return into their own country.” And on
the 30th of the same month the Council ordered, “That
the sum of £39 3s., laid out for the clothing of some Scots
prisonersbefore they went home, be paid out of the con-
* Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. same day.
State, December 24, 1651, MS. State * Ibid. same day.
Paper Office. * Ibid. Thursday afternoon, July 1,
* Ibid. same day. 1652.
1651.] EXECUTION OF THREE ROYALISTS. 213
tingent moneys of the Council.” And on the 3rd of Feb-
ruary and 1st of March, 1654, the Council of State ordered,
“That the private soldiers now remaining in the gaol of
Shrewsbury, of those that were sent thither after the fight
at Worcester, be set at liberty, and have 20 days allowed
them to go into their own country, they first taking the
engagement.”” “That Sir Arthur Haselrig have power to
discharge all the Scotch prisoners not Highlanders now at
Durham, who are under the degree of a captain, and give
them passes to go into Scotland, and take from them an
engagement that they will never more bear arms against
the Commonwealth of England.” "
Upon the whole, from the preceding and various other
minutes, I should infer that only a small proportion of the
Scottish prisoners, taken not only at Worcester but at
Dunbar, were sent to the English plantations.
On the 11th of September Mr. Scott, from the Council
of State, reported to the House the names of nine persons
they thought proper to be made examples of justice, and
tried by court-martial:—the Duke of Hamilton; the Earls
of Derby, Lauderdale, and Cleveland; Sir Timothy Fea-
therstonhaugh, Colonel Massey, Captain Benbow, and
the Mayor and Sheriff of Worcester." As already men-
tioned, the Duke of Hamilton died of his wounds four days
after the battle. The Earl of Derby was beheaded at
Bolton, in Lancashire, on the 15th of October; Sir Timothy
Featherstonhaugh was beheaded at Chester, on the 22nd
of October; and Captain Benbow was shot at Shrews-
bury, on the 15th of the same month.” These three
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Monday, March 1, 165}.
State, Friday, July 30, 1652, MS. State * Parl. Hist, vol. iii. p. 1372.
Paper Office. * Ibid. pp. 1373, 1374; Lord Leices-
* Ibid. Tuesday, February 3, 165%. ter's Journal, pp. 119, 120, 122.
214 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XI.
appear to have been all who were executed." The Earls
of Lauderdale and Cleveland were committed to the
Tower, as also was Colonel Massey.
There were other prisoners in the Tower besides Laud-
erdale, whose lives might have well appeared, to many of
their countrymen in after-days, to have been saved from
the hard doom of Derby and Benbow by some evil rather
than good fate. On the 9th of January 165%, the Council
of State ordered, “That Major-General Dalyell [sic], now
prisoner in the Tower, be allowed 5s. per week for his
subsistence during his imprisonment in the Tower.”” It
may be inferred that this was the same person who, in
after-years, figured with Lauderdale and Claverhouse in
the inhuman persecution of the unfortunate Covenanters of
Scotland. In the slaughter of Bothwell Bridge, in striking
a prisoner on the face with the hilt of his dagger till the
blood sprang, in the business of the torture-chamber of the
Privy Council of Scotland, General Thomas Dalzell took
such vengeance as was suited to the nature of the man, or
rather the beast, for the terrible defeats he had met with, in
other and very different times, from Cromwell’s Ironsides.
On the 15th of August, Stirling Castle surrendered to .
Lieutenant-General Monk. On Monday the 1st of Sep-
tember Monk took Dundee by storm, put 500 or 600 of
* I have not been able to ascertain deliver unto the Committee for Ex-
the fate of the Mayor and Sheriff of aminations, such papers as he hath now
Worcester, further than that, from the in his hands relating to the carriage of
following minute, it would appear that the late Mayor and Sheriff of Worces-
they were not executed at the time the ter in the business of admitting
Earl of Derby and the two other un- Charles Stuart and his adherents into
fortunate Royalists suffered death. It the town of Worcester.”—Order Book
may therefore be hoped that the Mayor of the Council of State, Monday,
and Sheriff of Worcester were not - January 5, 1654, MS. State Paper
condemned to death: “That the Judge Office.
Advocate of the Army be sent unto, to * Ibid. Friday, January 9, 165}.
1651.] DUNDEE TAKEN BY STORM.
215
the garrison to the sword, and, according to Ludlow,
“commanded the Governor, with divers others, to be
killed in cold blood.”" Attempts have been made to
clear Monk’s memory from this atrocity, and to show
that he not only did not “command ” it, but that “it
troubled him very much.””
| Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 366.-
Ludlow, as may well be supposed, had
no love for Monk, of whom he would
be apt to say, “Wendidit hic auro pa-
triam.”
* Lord Wharncliffe, in one of his
notes to his translation of M. Guizot's
Life of Monk, gives a statement from
the continuation to Baker's Chronicle,
that as “one Captain Kelly, of Colonel
Morgan's regiment, was carrying the
Governor to the General, one Major
Butler barbarously shot him dead.”
Lord Wharncliffe further says, “that
this account is confirmed by Sir Philip
Warwick in his Memoirs, who adds
that “it troubled Monk very much.”
CHAPTER XII.
THE news of the victory won by their forces at Worcester
reached the Council of State in a few hours. On the day
after the battle, the 4th of September, they made an
order, “That Colonel Berkstead” [who commanded the
guard of the Parliament] “do shoot off the guns of his
regiment, and cause a bonfire to be made before Whitehall
Gate, in token of joy for the good news of the routing of
the Scots’ army near Worcester.” On the same day
they ordered a letter to be written to the Lord Mayor,
Major-General Skippon, and the Commissioners of the
Militia of London, “to acquaint them with the good
tidings of the routing of the enemy about Worcester; to
let them know their horse are many of them dispersed; to
desire them, therefore, to send out their horse, for the
gathering up of such of the enemies as shall come this
way.” ” On the 6th of September the Council of State
ordered, “That the 500 men of Middlesex marched out to
Uxbridge be ordered every man to return to his own
home.” ” On the same day (Saturday, the 6th of Septem-
ber), the Council of State also made this order:-‘‘That
the dispersing of the militia in the several counties be
taken into consideration on Monday morning next, after
the disposing of the prisoners.” -
Accordingly, on Monday the 8th of September, they
* Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. same day.
State, Thursday, September 4, 1651, * Ibid. September 6, 1651.
MS. State Paper Office. * Ibid. same day.
1651.] THE COUNCIL DISBAND THE MILITIA.
217
made the following order, to which I beg to direct par-
ticular attention, for reasons which I will state presently.
It is also important to call attention to the fact that
Cromwell, the Lord-General, was not present at the Council
on this occasion—indeed, he did not enter London till four
days after—and that the meeting consisted of Bradshaw
the President, Sir Henry Vane, and nine other members
of the Council of State. The following is the order:—“That
a letter be written to the several [Commissioners of the]
Militias of the Counties in England who have sent forces
to the appointed rendezvous upon the occasion of the Scots’
army coming into England, to return them thanks, and
also to the officers and soldiers, for their great readiness in
the public service; and to let them know that they are
to disband their forces, and cause the horses and arms to be
delivered unto them who set them out.” "
Now there is a statement of Ludlow”—which has been
adopted by even eminent modern writers, as denoting
Cromwell’s treacherous purpose at this period—that the
Order Book of the Council of “That Major-General Skippon be de-
State, Monday, September 8, 1651,
MS. State Paper Office.—And on the
following day, the Council of State
ordered, “That a letter be written to
the Lord-General, to let him know
that money hath been ready for his
army for some days past, but could
not conveniently be sent unto him, in
regard of the motion of the forces and
dispersing of the regiments into seve-
ral places, for the greater ease both of
them and the people. That the Council
hath appointed the Treasurers at War
to wait on his Lordship, to consider
how the money may be speedily sent
to them, that there be not free quarter
by any means taken.”—Ibid. Tuesday,
September 9, 1651. On the same day:
sired to dismiss such of the trained
band of London as are upon the
guards.”—Ibid. On the 10th the
Council ordered, “That it be referred
to the Committee of Scottish and Irish
Affairs, to consider how the orders of
the House, for the disbanding of the
forces lately taken into pay, may be
put in execution.”—Ibid. September 10,
1651.
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 365,
366: 2nd edition, London, 1721.-The
inference drawn by Ludlow (vol. ii. p.
447), from Cromwell's calling the vic-
tory at Worcester a “crowning mercy,”
is quite unwarranted. Cromwell meant
no more than to say that their work
was done—finis coronat opus.
218 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
very next day after the fight at Worcester, Cromwell dis-
missed and sent home the militia. This is not only a
misstatement of the fact, but a confusion of ideas in the
mind of Ludlow respecting the very rudiments of govern-
ment. The power of the militia was that which formed
the main dispute between King Charles and the Parlia-
ment; and for a very good reason, because it was the
principal characteristic of the sovereign. There is no
question that, at this particular time, the sovereign in
England was the Parliament, of which the Council of State
was the Executive ; and in that capacity, as has been
shown above by the minute extracted from their own
Order Book, the Council of State, on the 8th of September,
five days after the Battle of Worcester, ordered the
militia to be disbanded in the several counties of England,
and their horses and arms to be delivered up.
It is little likely that the character and the designs,
whatever they were, of Cromwell—who wrapped himself
in clouds and darkness, so that not even his most intimate
friends knew with any degree of certainty, though some of
them might suspect, which way his ambition pointed—
should be analysed by a man like Ludlow, who had
in his brain such a jumble as this about the power of
the militia, and the very foundations of government and
sovereign power. The whole of what has been said, too,
about Cromwell’s excitement and elation after the Battle
of Worcester, partakes of the same error; an error which
Sir Walter Scott has also fallen into, when in “Woodstock”
he represents Cromwell as admitting the swearing, swag-
gering cavalier Wildrake (a likely sort of confidant for
such a man as Cromwell!) into his views for ejecting the
Parliament, and putting the crown on his own head. The
sort of excited self-assertion attributed by some writers to
1651.] INCONSISTENCIES OF CROMWELL'S CHARACTER. 219
Cromwell is quite as much out of keeping with all that we
know of the character of the real Cromwell, as the absurd
supposition of his admitting cavaliero Wildrake into his
in most thoughts. The haughty exultation ascribed to
Cromwell on this occasion belongs to the character of a
vain, pompous, Ostentatious, shallow person. Whatever
vices have been or may be imputed to him, the real Crom-
well was, assuredly, neither vain, pompous, ostentatious,
nor shallow. Pride, indeed—a very different sort of thing
from vanity—the sort of pride which the consciousness of
great talents directed by an iron will naturally inspires,
the real Cromwell no doubt had. It was a great error in
Scott’s conception of Cromwell’s character, to make him
babble out his thoughts to a stranger as he does to Wild-
rake. Vanity indeed is communicative, as well as osten-
tatious, and infirm of purpose. Cromwell was not only
unostentatious, but, though not cruel, he was inexorable
as death, and inscrutable as the grave.
In attempting to analyse the springs of action of such a
character as Cromwell’s, it is difficult to avoid (and I do
not pretend to be able to avoid) some apparent or even
real inconsistencies. For certain points, which at times
seem to be tolerably clear, again become involved in im-
penetrable darkness, and what seemed the clue is lost.
Moreover, as regards inconsistency, may not there be incon-
sistency in the actual life of a man P. In attempting to
portray an actual life, we must not condemn a part of that
life which is laudable, because we know the end, which is
not so. There is a time when we only See and reverence
in Cromwell the Wallace, the Tell, the Washington of his
country—a man full of compassion for the oppressed, and
indignation against the oppressor—a time when we re-
joice in his fortune, and honour his wisdom and valour.
220 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. XII.
But, of all this, clouds and darkness rest upon the end.
And while we honour the valour and rejoice in the fortune
of the successful champion of his country’s liberties, we
need not, in order to make a fancy portrait apparently
consistent and complete, but really untrue to nature and
fact, drag forward the end, which will come soon enough,
when we shall have to pass judgment on deeds, which he
who did them may once have believed it impossible for
all the temptations of earth and hell to make him do.
Dr. Arnold, in speaking of the almost insurmountable
difficulties in comprehending such a character, says: “The
genius which conceived the incomprehensible character of
Bamlet, would alone be able to describe with intuitive
truth the character of Scipio or of Cromwell. In both
these great men, the enthusiastic element, which clearly
existed in them, did but inspire a resistless energy into
their actions, while it no way interfered with the calmest
and keenest judgment in the choice of their means.”
What is said about the “enthusiastic element’’ may be
true enough ; but I dissent from the assertion that the
genius which conceived the character of Hamlet would be
able to describe with truth the character of Cromwell. I
think it probable that Shakspeare’s Cromwell would not
have been much more like the real Cromwell than Scott’s
Cromwellin “Woodstock.” And one ground of my opinion
History of Rome, vol. iii. p. 385. T. More. See Johnson's Dictionary—
“Eisel.”
* The mention of Shakspeare's Ham-
let tempts me to venture a small criti-
cism on the word in Act W., Scene 1,
printed “Esil,” and which some com-
mentators conjecture should be
“Weisel,” a river which runs into the
Baltic. I think there can be no doubt
that Shakspeare wrote “eisel,” meaning
thereby any bitter draught, as vinegar,
in which sense “eisel” is used by Sir
Shakspeare uses the very
Same word, in the same sense, in his
CXIth Sonnet:—
“Whilst, like a willing patient, I will
drink
Potions of eysell, 'gainst my strong
infection;–
No bitterness that I will bitter think.”
It is evident from this, that whatever
*


1651.] CROMWELL’S ALLEGED DESIGNS. 221
is, that Shakspeare’s Julius Caesar is as unlike the real
Julius Caesar as it was possible to make him. There is no
point of Caesar’s character better known than his aversion
to anything like either menace or boasting. He gave one
remarkable example of this, when he entered Rome with
his army, and the tribune Metellus twice opposed him.
The first time Caesar said to him, “If you don’t like what
is doing, get out of the way, for war needs not bold words.”
When Caesar, as the keys of the treasury were not found,
sent for Smiths and ordered them to break the doors, and
Metellus again opposed him, Caesar, raising his voice,
threatened to kill him if he did not desist from his opposi-
tion. “And this,” said he, “young man, you well know is
more painful for me to have said than to do.” This is
very different from the brag and bluster about courage
and fear, which form the burthen of what Shakspeare has
put into the mouth of his as much a pseudo-Caesar as
Scott's is a pseudo-Cromwell. ||
Most of the writers who have treated this particular
period of English History have assumed that, immediately
after the Battle of Worcester, Cromwell had fully made up
his mind to turn out the Parliament, and concentrate all
their powers of sovereignty in his single person. As one
of the principal evidentiary facts adduced for this assump-
tion—namely, Ludlow's misstatement above mentioned,
that Cromwell dismissed the militia immediately after the
Battle of Worcester—is found not to be a fact at all (the
militia having, as has been shown, been regularly dismissed
by the Council of State, when the work for which they had
been called out was done), I think it can by no means be
particular liquid Shakspeare meant to river, but swallowing a particularly bit-
designate, he meant a draught of ter or nauseous draught of medicine.
“eisel” to denote, not swallowing a * Plutarch, C. Caesar, c. 35.
222 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
concluded that Cromwell had at this particular time made -
up his mind to pursue such a course, or even that the idea.
of such a course had entered into his mind at all.
On the 9th of September, the House ordered lands of
inheritance, to the value of £1,000 per annum, to be settled
on Lambert; £500 each on Monk and Whalley; £300 on
Okey; and £200 on Alured, for their great and eminent
services to the Commonwealth. The House also ordered
a Bill to be brought in, for settling so much of Scotland as
is now under the power of their forces, “under the govern-
ment of this Commonwealth.” On the 11th of September,
the House resolved “That lands of inheritance, to the
yearly value of £4,000, belonging to the State [in addition
to £2,500 per annum formerly granted], be settled upon the
Lord-General Cromwell and his heirs, as a mark of favour
from the Parliament, for his great and eminent services to
the Commonwealth.” Apartments were also ordered to be
fitted up for Cromwell at Hampton Court. The House
likewise ordered £2,000 yearly rent to be settled on Henry
Ireton, Esq., Lord-Deputy of Ireland, Cromwell’s son-in-
law." When the news of this grant was brought over to
Ireton, he said, according to Ludlow, that the Parliament
ought to pay their debts before they made any such pre-
sents; that he had no need of their land, and therefore
would not have it.” -
When Cromwell returned to London, he was met at
Acton by the Speaker, the Lord-President Bradshaw, and
many members of Parliament and of the Council of
State, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriffs of
London.” He entered the city in a coach of state, and
1 Parl. Hist. vol. iii. pp. 1371, 2nd edition, London, 1721.
1372. * Parl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 1371, note.
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 371 :

1651.] RECEPTION OF CROMWELL BY PARLIAMENT. 223
was received, says a cotemporary journalist, “ with all
possible acclamations of joy.”
On the 16th of September Cromwell appeared in the
House; when the Speaker, in the name of the Parliament,
made an oration to him, and gave him the thanks of the
Parliament for his great services to the Commonwealth.
On the very same day the “Bill for an Equal Representa-
tion in Parliament”—that is, the Bill for the election of a
New Parliament, in which the people should be fairly repre-
sented, and consequently putting an end to the present
Parliament, called the Long Parliament, which had first
met on the 3rd of November 1640—was ordered to be taken
into debate the next morning, and nothing to intervene.
Accordingly, on the following day, September 17, this Bill
was made the subject of debate almost the whole day.
But nothing further is entered in the Journals of the House
concerning it, than that it was adjourned to that day se’n-
night; and then the report was to be made to the House
of it, the first business. The 24th and 25th of this month
of September were almost wholly employed in debating the
grand point of a new representative. On the latter of these
days, the 25th of September, the question being put, “That
a Bill be brought in for settling a time certain for the sit-
ting of this Parliament, and for calling a new one, with such
fit rules, qualifications, proportions, and other circum-
stances, as this Parliament shall think fit, and shall be for
the good and safety of this Commonwealth,” the House
divided, and the Yeas went forth, when the Lord-General
* Parl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 1371.-The their attending upon the Speaker upon
following minute, in the Order Book the occasion of meeting the Lord-
of the Council of State, has reference General at his return from the Battle
to this occasion :-‘‘That 40s. be paid of Worcester.”— Order Book of the
to the coachman of the Earl of Pem- Council of State, Friday, September
broke, and 30s. to the postillion, for 26, 1651, MS. State Paper Office.
*
*
224 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
[Cromwell] and Mr. Scott, the tellers of them, brought in
the numbers, 33; Sir H. Mildmay and Sir James Harring-
ton, for the Noes, 26; on which the Bill was ordered to be
brought in, and a Committee appointed for that purpose."
The result of this business did not appear till November;
and in the meantime it is necessary to describe some im-
portant measures, carried out by the Parliament in the
month of October.
I have, in a former chapter, mentioned that the Council
of State had received several letters from their ambassadors
in Holland, St. John and Strickland, relating repeated
affronts offered to them there; and that, in consequence of
these affronts, the English ambassadors were recalled, and
abruptly took their leave and came home. We shall now
see the first of the long chain of disastrous consequences
to the Dutch, that flowed from the affronts offered to the
English ambassadors in Holland.
In little more than a month after the Battle of Worces-
ter, namely, on the 9th of October 1651, the English Parlia-
ment passed the famous Navigation Act; whereby it was
enacted that no goods should be imported into England
from Asia, Africa, or America, except in English ships, nor
from any part of Europe except in ships of the country of
which the goods were the growth or manufacture: that
no salt-fish, whale-fins, or oil should be imported, but what
were caught or made by the people of England; nor any
salt-fish exported, or carried from one port to another in
England, but in English vessels.”
Parl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 1373.
* Scobell, part ii. p. 176.--The most
eminent political economists agree as
to the policy of the Navigation Laws.
I have, in the preceding volume, quoted
the words of Adam Smith. I will here
quote the words of Mr. John Stuart
Mill:—“When the English Navigation
Laws were enacted, the Dutch, from
their maritime skill and their low rate
of profit at home, were able to carry
for other nations, England included, at
cheaper rates than those nations could
carry for themselves, which placed all
other countries at a great comparative
disadvantage in obtaining experienced
1651.] COMMISSIONERS SENT TO SCOTLANI). 225
On the 22nd of October, the Council of State ordered,
“That it be reported to the Parliament that the Council
offer the following to be sent Commissioners into Scotland
—Lord Chief Justice St. John, Sir Henry Vane (junior)
Major Richard Salwey, Colonel George Fenwick, Major-
General Lambert, Major-General Deane, Alderman Robert
Tichborne.”" These Commissioners proceeded to Scot-
land, to offer to unite and incorporate Scotland into one
Commonwealth with England and Ireland, and to call
upon the Scots to choose their knights of shires and
burgesses of towns, and send them to Westminster. But
this being refused by the Presbyterian party, the Par-
liament of England enacted the union of the two nations,
and the abolition of monarchy in Scotland, in spite
of their opposition On the 21st of November, 1651,
the Council of State made the following minute :-‘‘That
Mr. Lokier, Mr. Caryll, Mr. Arthur, and Mr. Falcon-
bridge be ordered to go into Scotland, as preachers
with the Commissioners that are now going thither
from the Parliament ; and that the Commissioners do
speak with them about it, and signify their answer
to the Council.” ” Under date September 10, 1652,
Whitelock says : “The Judges newly made and sent
from England went their circuit in Scotland; ” with what
effects the following entry in Whitelock's Journal of
October 4, 1652, shows:–“Letters that sixty persons,
seamen for their ships of war. The pedient.”—Principles of Political Eco-
Navigation Laws, by which this defi- nomy, vol. ii. p. 535: 6th edition, Lon-
ciency was remedied, and at the same don, 1865.
time a blow struck against the maritime | Order Book of the Council of
power of a nation with which England State, October 22, 1651, MS. State
was then frequently engaged in hostili- Paper Office.
ties, were probably, though economi- * Ibid. Friday, November 21, 1651.
cally disadvantageous, politically ex-
WOL. II. Q
226 COMMON WEATLTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
men and women, were accused before the Commissioners
for Administration of Justice in Scotland, at the last cir-
cuit, for witches; but they found so much malice and so
little proof against them, that none were condemned.”"
If tried before their own Judges, most of those poor crea-
tures would have been condemned and burnt alive. Such
was one result of the charge of Cromwell’s pikemen at
Dunbar ! - -
Under date 27th of October 1651, the following minutes
appear in the Order Book: “That £50 be paid by Mr.
Frost to Mr. White, in consideration of his pains in writing
the Treatise of the Life and Reign of the late King.”-–
“That the Lord-General, Lord-Commissioner Whitelock,
Lord-Commissioner Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and
Major-General Harrison, or any two or more of them, be
appointed a Committee, to consider of some fit person or
persons to write the history of these times, and to take the
care and oversight thereof; and to consider likewise of a
fit encouragement for such person or persons as shall be so
employed, and how it may be raised and paid to this
use.” .
The appearance of Cromwell’s name on this Committee
seems to confirm the remark of Waller the poet, Cromwell’s
relation, that Cromwell was not so wholly illiterate as was
commonly imagined. Indeed, his letters of advice to his
son Richard show that he had a just appreciation of the
usefulness in particular of historical studies. In one letter
he advises him to read history, study the mathematics and
geography; and in another letter, he recommends to his
particular attention Sir Walter Raleigh’s History, as “a
body of history which would give him comprehensive views.”
* Whitelock, p. 545. State, October 27, 1651, MS. State
* Order Book of the Council of Paper Office.
1651.] “THE HISTORY OF THESE TIMES.” 227
This shows that Cromwell had himself read books that
required long and continued study and attention.
Unfortunately for the Council of State, however, this
care to have the story of their times written by a friendly
pen would seem to have been fruitless; for their story was
told mostly by their deadly enemies, so that, after all the
toils and perils they had passed, they left behind them
an execrated name, and a scorched and blackened memory.
As they sat round that council-table on that 27th day of
October 1651, and “appointed a Committee to consider of
some fit person or persons to write the history of these
times,” they must have been fully aware that they had
done deeds which, whether for good or evil, would be long
remembered among mankind; but they could hardly have
contemplated the fate that awaited some of them living,
and all of them dead—the tortures of the old barbarous
law of treason, inflicted on the living, which they never in-
flicted when they inflicted death—the gibbeting of the
mortal remains of the dead—and after that the gibbeting
of their memories, by writers who, in their scurriljest-books
told the Stuart King that the men before whom he had
only distinguished himself by being the foremost in flight,
and by whom his best and bravest had been scattered and
destroyed in so many battles and sieges, were not only
villains but cowards ! -
On the 28th of October an order was made by the
Council of State, “That it be referred to the Committee of
the Admiralty, to consider of the ordering of the offices of
Gunner, Boatswain, and Carpenter, in every of the State's
ships, in such manner that the State may not be abused in
the passing of their accounts, in which they pretend fre-
quently to greater expenses than have really been made
Q 2
228 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
for the public service.” It appears that all the care taken
by Sir Henry Vane and the Committee of the Admiralty
was unable wholly to prevent abuses in the details of the
naval service. Mr. Dixon, in his “Life of Admiral Blake,”
quoting from Blake’s letter to the Navy Commissioners
about this time, with enclosures, preserved among the
Deptford MSS., says: “From the extracts of letters written
by various captains of vessels, which he submitted to the con-
sideration of the authorities in London, it is still possible
to gather some idea of the extreme poverty of means with
which Blake had to perform his wondrous exploits. An
example or two will suffice for this purpose: Captain
Pearce, he [Blake] says, writing from Londonderry, on the
27th of August of this year [1651], * complains that the
fleets on that coast generally stand in great need of victuals,
desires speedy supplies thereof, otherwise must greatly
suffer; goes to half allowance, drinks water; hath but
seven days’ provisions, most of it stinks; butter and cheese
not edible.’” And yet, so far back as the 21st of
March 164}, the Council of State had made an order, “That
justice may be done upon such as have furnished stinking
victuals to the fleet.” “ And the care of the Council of
State is further shown by the following orders : “That
an order be sent to the Commissioners of the Navy, to make
sale of such beef and pork as hath been returned from the
State’s ships as too short cut in respect to the allowance
usually given to the mariners to the best advantage to the
State.”—“That order be sent to the Commissioners of
the Navy, to give order to the victualler at Portsmouth, in
1 Order Book of the Council of State, * Order Book of the Council of
October 28, 1651, MS. State Paper State, March 21, 1643, MS. State
Office. Paper Office.
* Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 174.

1651.) - NAVAL ABUSES. 229
regard to the great scarcity of pork, to allow three pounds
of beef in lieu of two pounds of pork.”
Another abuse was the custom of paying all the seamen’s
wages in London, on which Mr. Dixon has published, in
his “Life of Blake,” a letter written by Blake from Ply-
mouth, on the 28th of August 1651, to the Commissioners of
the Navy, which runs thus: “Gentlemen, There hath been
this summer divers mariners pressed in this and other
western ports into the State's ships; and in respect their
habitations are so far distant from London, many of them
have, upon the going in of the ships they served in, been
discharged here ; and one Mr. Edward Pattison of this
town, out of charity, hath paid them their tickets, they
being poor people, and not able to look after it alone. This
man acquaints me that, for some tickets, notwithstanding
he hath been without his money a good while, he is in
danger to lose it through delay. I know not what the
reason is, but I believe what he did was merely to relieve
and ease the poor men. I therefore make it my desire to
you, that you will give orders for the payment of such tickets
as he hath or shall present unto you, they agreeing, both in
entries and discharges, with the muster-books, and thereby
Mr. Pattison not put to unnecessary attendance. Therein
you will not only oblige him, but also your affectionate
friend, ROBERT BLAKE.”
Such things as this enable us to see the reason why,
when Blake died, the seamen lamented his loss as that
of a father; even as, when Turenne fell, the French
soldiers cried, “Our father is dead ” If the Council
of State and their Admiral (Blake) had been immortal,
1 Order Book of the Councilof State, * Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 175, from
March 23, 1643, MS. State Pape the Deptford MSS. t
Office.
---
230 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
it would not have been possible for any satirist to give
such a picture of the British Navy 90 years after this
time as Smollett has done; to describe such captains as
Oakham and Whiffle, and such midshipmen as Crampley;
nor, in regard to this very matter of tickets, to say—“I got
leave to go on shore next day with the gunner, who re-
commended me to a Jew, that bought my ticket at the rate
of 40 per cent. discount l’” It may be certainly inferred,
from the terms which Blake uses, “paid them their tickets
out of charity,” that his seamen were not robbed of nearly
half their hard-earned money, under the name of discount.
On the 26th of October “a letter came from General
Blake, that all the Isle of Jersey was reduced by the Par-
liament’s forces, under him and Colonel Heynes, except the
castles of Elizabeth (to which Sir George Carteret was re-
tired) and Mont Orgueil, the latter of which was soon
after taken.” On the 15th of December, “Elizabeth
Castle was surrendered by Sir George Carteret, Governor
thereof, to Colonel James Neave, commander of the Par-
liament’s forces in the said island, upon composition, the
articles whereof were very favourable.”
On the 31st of October, Castle Rughen and Peele Castle
were delivered up, on articles, to the Parliament’s forces by
the Countess of Derby. “And so the whole of the Isle of
Man was reduced to the power of the Parliament, the said
Countess having only leave with herself and children to
go into England, and make addresses to the Parliament;
and hopes to go into France or Holland.”
We must now return to the vital question of the time
of the continuance of the Parliament.
1 Perfect Diurnal, from November Leicester's Journal, p. 128.
3 to 10, quoted in Lord Leicester's * Politicus, from November 6 to 17,
Journal, p. 125. quoted in Lord Leicester's Journal,
* Generall?roceedings, from Decem- p. 125.
ber 24 to January 1, quoted in Lord
1651.] PLEAS FOR THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 231
Since, after the Battle of Worcester, all the Royalist party,
as Clarendon remarks, lay prostrate, the war which the
Parliament had upon their hands may be fairly considered
as ended; and the plea afterwards set up by some of them,
that they “stayed to end the Dutch war, and that they
never bid fairer for being masters of the whole world,” is
a strange plea indeed, and forms one of the strongest
grounds of justification for Cromwell’s expulsion of them.
In the first place, it is quite evident that this plea was
totally inapplicable to the year 1651. The Dutch war
might, indeed, be then looming in the distance; but it
did not break out till May 1652, and the plea of staying
to be “masters of the whole world” is equivalent to staying
for an unlimited time. And yet the man who made use
of these pleas was, I believe, besides being a man of great
eloquence and great administrative talent, as honest and
as brave a man as ever lived, and as ever died for what
he considered justice and truth.
There is another curious plea put forward by Henry
Marten, in the course of a debate during the time of
the Dutch war. He told the House, “That he thought
they might find the best advice from the Scripture
what they were to do in this particular: that when Moses
was found upon the river, and brought to Pharaoh’s
daughter, she took care that the mother might be found
out, to whose care he might be committed to be nursed
—which succeeded very happily. Their Commonwealth
was yet an infant, of a weak growth, and a very tender
constitution; and therefore his opinion was, that nobody
could be so fit to nurse it, as the mother who brought
it forth; and that they should not think of putting it
under any other hands, until it had obtained more years
| Scot's Speeches, in Richard Cromwell's first Parliament, reported in
Burton's Diary.
= <===
1:=
232 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
and vigour. That they had another infant too under their
hands, the war with Holland, which had thrived wonderfully
under their conduct; but he much doubted that it would
be quickly strangled, if it were taken out of their care, who
had hitherto governed it.” This, as far as it can be called
an argument, must depend on the exactness of the analogy
between a young child and a young Commonwealth, and
is open to the objections applicable to arguments drawn
from metaphors. The latter part of it, however, relating
to the Dutch war, is not without force; for though, after
Cromwell expelled the Parliament, the Dutch war was
brought to a successful issue on the part of the English,
the peace made with Holland by Cromwell was neither so
honourable nor so advantageous as it would have been if
the Long Parliament had made it. Cromwell, Scot says
in one of his speeches, “was never so successful as when
he was a servant to the Commonwealth. What a dis-
honourable peace he made, and what an unprofitable and
dangerous war !” -
More than two years after the Parliament had neglected
Ireton’s plan for a New Parliament, called the “Agreement
of the People,” and prosecuted John Lilburne for his, we
find that Cromwell himself had taken up the matter
almost immediately after the Battle of Worcester—in
fact, on the very first day he took his seat, the 16th of
September, as we have seen. We have also seen that, on
the 25th of September, the House voted upon a division
(Cromwell and Scot being tellers for the majority), that
a Bill should be brought in, for fixing a certain time
for putting an end to the present Parliament, and calling
another. A Committee was appointed, in which were
* Clarendon, vol. vi. pp. 4, 5.
* Meaning the peace with Holland and the war with Spain.
1651.] QUESTION OF A NEW PARLIAMENT. 233
included St. John, Whitelock, Vane, and Cromwell. A Bill
was brought in and read a first time, and two days after a
second time. It was then committed to a Committee of
the whole House. The result appears from the following
entry in the Journals :—
“Friday, the 14th of November, 1651.-The question
being propounded, That it is now a convenient time to de-
clare a certain time for the continuance of this Parliament,
beyond which it shall not sit : and the question being put,
That this question be now put,
The House was divided :
-- The Noes went forth. -
“Lord-General [Cromwell], { Tellers for the *] 50
“Lord Chief Justice, With the Yeas
“Colonel Morley, ſ Tellers for the Noes } 46
“Mr. Bond, l With the Noes
*---------
96
“On the main question:
“The Yeas went forth.
“Lord-General, { Tellers for the Yeas
“Lord Chief Justice, With the Yeas } 49
“Colonel Morley, ſ Tellers for the Noe
“Mr. Bond, lWith the Noes. 47
96
“Resolved, That this business be resumed again on
Tuesday next.”
“Tuesday, the 18th of November, 1651.-Resolved, That
the time for the continuance of this Parliament, beyond
which they resolve not to sit, shall be the Third day of
November, One thousand six hundred and fifty-four.” “So
* Commons' Journals, Friday, No- * Ibid. Tuesday, November 18,
vember 14, 1651. 1651.
234 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
they have three years yet,” writes Lord Leicester in his
Journal."
Thus, as this Parliament met on the 3rd of November
1640, its duration, to the 3rd of November 1654, would be
14 years; or, according to a later resolution of the House,
appointing the 3rd of November 1653, instead of the 3rd of
November 1654, before fixed on, its duration would be 13
years.
The Parliament thought fit to proceed to the election of
a Council of State for the fourth time, for the fourth year
of the new Government, in November instead of in Febru-
ary; and on Monday the 24th of November 1651, in ac-
cordance with the plan they had pursued the preceding
year, they chose 21 of the Council for the past year, and
20 who were not members the preceding year. Among
these new members was Robert Blake.” Lord Leicester
says, in his Journal, under date Monday, November 24,
1651: “And it was thought strange that Sir Henry Mildmay
and Colonel Harrison, who were so active and painful the
last year, should now be of the 20 which were of the Coun-
cil and now left out.” I transcribe from the Journals of
the House the following names, as having the greatest and
least number of votes or subscriptions, as it is called in the
Journals:—
Lord-General [Cromwell] . tº o 118
Lord-Commissioner Whitelock . e 113
Lord Chief Justice St. John . º * 108
Sir Henry Wane (jun.) . e e . -104
John Gurdon, Esq. tº . © & 103
| Journal of the Earl of Leicester, venber 24, 1651.
p. 126. * Journal of the Earl of Leicester,
* Commons' Journals, Monday, No- p. 126.
1651.) THE NEW COUNCIL OF STATE. 235
Lieutenant-General Fleetwood © º 102
Lord Chief Justice Rolle tº & e 95
Lord-Commissioner Lisle • - e 91
Serjeant Bradshaw © º § • 89
Sir Arthur Haselrig § © { } * > 89
Dennis Bond, Esq. e . . . e 88
Thomas Scott, Esq. o º e “… 86
Colonel Purefoy . tº e ge e 82
Colonel Wauton . © º tº ſe 78
&c. &c. &c.
Robert Blake, Esq. < * º e tº 42
Earl of Pembroke . e © & * 42
Henry Marten, Esq. (the last and lowest of
this year) . & © º ſº © 414
On the 26th of November it was resolved by the Parlia-
ment, that henceforth no Chairman of any Committee shall
continue longer in the chair than the space of one month,
and that this vote shall extend likewise to the President-
ship of the Council of State. “It was said,” writes Lord
Leicester in his Journal, under date November 26, 1651,
“that Serjeant Bradshaw, who had been President of the
Council from their beginning,” was much troubled at this
vote, by which he lost his Lordship, and came to be plain
Serjeant Bradshaw; and that he endeavoured to bring the
matter again into debate into the House, upon the point
of what was meant by a month: but this for the present
was stopped at the Council, and Serjeant Bradshaw was
* Commons' Journals, Monday, No- State appointed a President at each
vember 24, 1651. meeting. But on March 10 they made
* This is not strictly accurate. For the an order, “That Mr. Serjeant Bradshaw
first three weeks of their existence, or shall be the President of this Council.”
rather more—namely, from February (See Vol. I. p. 38.)
17 to March 10, 1643—the Council of
236 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, [CHAP. XII.
desired to take the chair, and his time limited to that day
month, from Monday the 1st of December.”
At this time two events happened, both of them very
unfavourable to the Parliament. The first of these was
the death of Ireton, who died of the plague at Limerick, on
the 26th of November 1651, at the age of 41.” The other
event was the Parliament drawing on themselves the
bitter hostility of Lambert, who was appointed by them
Ireton's successor in Ireland; but soon after, thinking him-
self unworthily treated by them, threw up the appointment.
Henry Ireton, whose career was thus prematurely cut
short, and who, had he lived, must have been one of the
most powerful opponents or supporters of the Government
of Cromwell, belonged to that class of ancient gentry
whose names had been unsullied by the honours of the
Stuarts. He was born in 1610, and was the eldest son of
German Ireton of Attenton, Esq., in the county of Notting-
ham. His family was related to that of Colonel Hutchin-
son, also a Nottinghamshire family, and through them to
the Byrons of Newstead; but how long they had possessed
estates there I do not undertake to say, nor whether, like
the Hampdens and others, they professed to go beyond the
Conquest. -
It was much the fashion at that time to trace de-
scents, either from those who had come in with William
or (as Christopher Sly puts it) with “Richard Conqueror,”
or had been “there when the Conqueror came.” No doubt
the pedigree of all families extends, in some way or other,
* Journal of the Earl of Leicester, Ireton died of a fever; but Ludlow
p. 127. (vol. i. p. 383), who was with him
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 382: till within two days of his death, states
2nd edition, London, 1721–Lord that his condition, “a burning fever,
Leicester, in his Journal (p. 127, in rendered him more liable to the con-
Sydney Papers by Blencowe), says tagion.”
1651.] THE OLD ENGLISH NOBILITY. 237
beyond the Conquest, the pedigree of the Sly's no less than
the pedigree of the De Veres. But the way is the question.
Mrs. Hutchinson—who, with many noble qualities, was not
exempt from human infirmities—traces her descent, by her
mother’s side, from those who came in with the Conqueror,
and by her father's side from those who were “there when
the Conqueror came ; ” and says of the Mayor of Notting-
ham and his wife—“He was a very honest bold man, but
had no more than a burgher's discretion; he was yet very
well assisted by his wife, a woman of great zeal and cour-
age, and with more understanding than women of her
rank usually have : ” Overlooking the fact that there lived
at that time an Englishman, named Thomas Hobbes, to
whom Mrs. Hutchinson would hardly have allowed more
than a burgher’s pedigree," but who possessed an under-
standing considerably more powerful than all the under-
standings of all the Apsleys, of all the St. Johns, and of
all the Hutchinsons put together.
Besides, these sweeping assertions respecting pedigree—
assertions assuming an uninterrupted male descent for
600 years—are, primá facie, always improbable, and,
though within the limits of the possible, extremely
difficult to prove strictly. It is easy to assert of an
obscure family, as Mrs. Hutchinson and Mr. Hyde have
asserted, that they had possessed an estate, which “had
continued in their family, and descended from father to
son, from before the Conquest.” But it is not so easy
to produce the evidence necessary to satisfy a competent
tribunal of the absolute truth of such assertions. The
1 Hobbes's father, vicar of Charlton a glover, which is a great trade there,
and Westport, near Malmesbury, had and in times past much greater.”—Life
an elder brother, Francis, Alderman of of Mr. Thomas Hobbes of Malmes-
Malmesbury, which is the title of the bury, in Aubrey's Lives, vol. ii. p. 506:
chief magistrate there, “by profession London, 1813.
238 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
best test of this is to take a given number of families, re-
specting which, from their conspicuous position, a satisfac-
tory body of evidence is not only known to exist, but is
open to public inspection. Such a given number of fami-
lies is furnished by the Peerage of England, from the Nor-
man Conquest to the present time. Now, in all that con-
siderable number of families, there is, I believe, but one, of
which the name as well as the lands and honours descended,
through successive generations, from male heir to male
heir, from the 11th to the 17th century. This family is that
of the De Veres, Earls of Oxford. There are one or two
others (for example, the Percys and the Berkeleys) that
in name existed as long; but their lands and honours had,
in the course of time, passed by a female into another
family, which had assumed their name. It will be found,
on a close examination, that in a large proportion of the
families referred to, the line has ended in a daughter or
daughters, through whom their estates have passed into
other families, and have not reverted to the sons of younger
branches of such families. The result is well expressed in
the words of Lord Chief Justice Crew, in his eloquent exor-
dium in delivering the opinion of the Judges on the
case referred to them by the House of Lords in the time of
Charles I., respecting the right to the Earldom of Oxford:
“And yet Time hath his revolutions; there must be a period
and an end to all temporal things, finis rerum; an end of
names and dignities, and whatsoever is terrene; and why
not of De Were 9 For where is Bohun ? Where is Mow-
bray? Where is Mortimer? Nay—which is more and
most of all—where is Plantagenet 9 They are entombed
in the urns and sepulchres of mortality 9’’’
* 3 Cru. Dig., p. 170.

1651.) THE NEW ENGLISH NODILITY. 23ſ
There was a certain family, by name Burun, which held
certain lordships in the county of Nottingham, in the
reigns of William II., of Stephen, and of Henry II. The
last of these was Roger de Burun, whose barony was
given by King John to William de Briwere. After an
interval of more than 300 years, Henry VIII. gave New-
stead Abbey, in the same county, to a family of the name of
Byron, which family is described as “descended from the
* Lord Byron, the poet, loudly
boasted of his Norman descent, and of the power and great-
ness of his Norman ancestors, the Buruns. But, besides
the change in the vowels of the name, there would need a
long and strong chain of proof to bridge over that chasm of
300 years, between Henry II. and Henry VIII. It is also
notorious that Henry VIII., like other despots, granted his
favours to new men and new women; for he gave the whole
above family of Burun.”
revenue of a religious house, of considerable value, to a
woman, as a reward for making a pudding which happened
to gratify his palate." The descendant of this fortunate
woman-cook, when boasting of his “father’s hall—a vast
and venerable pile,” so old that it would have fallen had not
“strength been pillared in each massive aisle”—would be
apt to keep the “pudding ” in the background. Lord Byron,
perhaps, meant emphatically to disclaim descent from the
lady above referred to, when he said, on selling Newstead
Abbey: “I have parted with an estate which has been in my
family for nearly 300 years, and was never disgraced by
being in possession of a lawyer, a churchman, or a woman
during that period.” According to Fuller, “not only all
the cooks, but the meanest turnbroach, in the King's
kitchen, did lick his fingers.”
* Fuller's Church History, p. 337.
* Moore's Life of Byron vol. i. p. 479.
240 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
Socrates, in the “Gorgias” of Plato, divides adulation
into several branches, of which, he says, Rhetoric is one,
and Cookery another. The cases above mentioned are apt
examples of the way in which the latter branch of adulation
performs its work, and attains its object. It might be an
enquiry neither altogether uninteresting nor unimportant,
to investigate the proportions in which Cookery and Rhe-
toric have contributed to the formation of “noble families.”
But, by whatever branch of adulation an abbey was obtained
from Henry VIII., there could hardly be a more strange
ethical phenomenon, than that a man should boast, and be
not merely tolerated but admired for boasting, that he in-
herited an abbey which had been given to his ancestor by
Benry VIII. It might be a just ground of pride to be the
inheritor of a “Castle Dangerous.” It might even be
matter of satisfaction to be descended from those who had
founded an abbey or a priory; such foundation being a
proof of ancient power and wealth, and of a zeal sincere, if
blind and misdirected, for the glory of God and the well-
being of man. But public morality must have reached a
strange state of confusion, when the possession of property
which has the mark on it of public robbery"—performed
too, without personal risk, on women, and on unarmed,
unwarlike men—should be esteemed an honourable distinc-
tion. Poets may challenge our sympathy for bold cow-
stealers and bold buccaneers. Hardihood and courage,
even when employed in a bad cause, are still hardihood
and courage. But a man has no more cause to boast
of the possession of the -most picturesque or richest
* This term belongs to the transac- use: but that it should be used for the
tion, because this property was appro- necessary expenses of government;
priated in direct violation of the King's and the subject never afterwards charged
promise, solemnly declared in Parlia- either with faces or loans.—See Coke,
ment, that none of it for ever, in time 4 Inst. 43, 44.
to come, should be converted to private
1651.] OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE STATESMEN. 241
abbey in England, than of that of Crossraguel in Ayrshire,
obtained by roasting a man alive; or than of any trinkets
he may have inherited from his ancestors the beadles, who, ,
in the performance of their duty, hauled Hostess Quickly
and Mistress Doll Tearsheet to what were termed by
Ancient Pistol “base durance and contagious prison,” and
who, by somewhat overstepping the exact limits of their
function, may have obtained the said trinkets from the
persons of those ladies. The analogy seems nearly com-
plete. In both cases some antiquity of family is proved.
And if the office of beadle temp. Henry W. should be con-
sidered as not quite equal in dignity to that of lackey
temp. Henry VIII., the greater antiquity of the beadle
descent may, perhaps, make up the difference.
In 1626 Henry Ireton went to Oxford, as a gentleman-
commoner of Trinity College, and in 1629 he took his
degree of Bachelor of Arts. Lord Macaulay, in his essay
on Lord Bacon, mentions it as a remarkable fact, that the
statesmen of Queen Elizabeth were all members of the
University of Cambridge. He adds that Cambridge had
the honour of educating those celebrated Protestant
bishops whom Oxford had the honour of burning; and at
Cambridge were formed the minds of all those statesmen,
to whom chiefly is to be attributed the secure establish-
ment of the Reformed religion in the North of Europe.
But of the men most distinguished on the side of the Par-
liament in the great struggle of the 17th century, Oxford
produced as many as Cambridge; for while Cromwell,
Fairfax, Milton, Hutchinson, and Marvell were Cambridge
men, Hampden, Pym, Vane, Blake, and Ireton were Oxford
men. Of the men most distinguished on the side of the
Ring, Cambridge produced nearly as many as Oxford; for
while Laud and Hyde were Oxford men, Strafford and
WOL. II. R
242 *
COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
Falkland were Cambridge Imen. Hobbes also was an
Oxford man, but Oxford repudiated him ; and if she could
not burn him, as she had burned the Protestant bishops a
century before, she burned his works. For on the 21st of
July, 1683, the “Leviathan,” at the same time with a book
“Of Purgatory,” had the honour to be condemned by the
Convocation to be publicly burned in the school-court or
quadrangle.”
But though the men educated at the two great
English Universities do not afford any indication of the
spirit of those Universities, the order of the Council of
State, mentioned in the preceding volume, that a letter be
written to Dr. Hill, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge,
respecting the students of that society willing to go to sea in
the summer's fleet,” shows that the Parliament considered
that they had friends among the Cambridge students. I
may add here, that no argument in favour of public schools
can be drawn from the men of that time; neither Hamp-
den, nor Clarendon, nor Fairfax, nor Cromwell, nor Blake,
having been educated at a public school. But of the
public schools, Westminster would appear to have been
then particularly conspicuous; and this was before the
time of Busby, who was appointed head-master in 1640.
Anthony Wood, speaking of Vane's early life, says he
“was bred at Westminster School, with Sir Arthur Ha-
selrig, Thomas Scot the regicide, and other notorious anti-
monarchists.” -
From Oxford, Ireton removed to the Middle Temple,
where, as appears by the Society’s books, he entered as a
student on the 24th of November 1629; but he was never
called to the bar. I have already mentioned the important
* Wood's Ath. Oxon., art. “Thomas * Vol. I. p. 59.
Bobbes.” - * Ibid, art. “Wane.”
1651.] THE INNS OF COURT LIFE-GUARD,
243
part which the gentlemen of the Inns of Court took in the
war between the King and the Parliament. I would add
here, that besides Ireton, Lambert, Ludlow, and Michael
Jones, the colonels of some of the most distinguished of
the Ironside regiments had been members of the Inns of
Court, as appears from the following passage of Ludlow's
Memoirs, which may be found to possess some interest, as
giving an account of the Origin of a corps of gentlemen
forming a life-guard for the General of the Parliament,
many of whom became afterwards distinguished officers:–
“Soon after my engagement in this cause,” says Ludlow,
“I met with Mr. Richard Fiennes, son to the Lord Say,
and Mr. Charles Fleetwood,' son to Sir Miles Fleetwood,
then a Member of the House of Commons; with whom con-
sulting, it was resolved by us to assemble as many young
gentlemen of the Inns of Court (of which we then were),
and others, as should be found disposed to this service, in
order to be instructed together in the use of arms, to ren-
der ourselves fit and capable of acting, in case there should
be occasion to make use of us. To this end we procured
a person experienced in military affairs, to instruct us in
the use of arms; and for some time we frequently met to
exercise at the Artillery Ground in London. And being
informed that the Parliament had resolved to raise a life-
guard for the Earl of Essex, to consist of a hundred gentle-
men, under the command of Sir Philip Stapleton, a Mem-
ber of Parliament, most of our company entered themselves
* It may be mentioned, as an in-
stance of the inaccuracy of Noble
(Memoirs of the House of Cromwell),
that he describes Charles Fleetwood
as having risen from the rank of a
trooper in the Earl of Essex's forces;
whereas, as appears from what Lud-
low here says, he was only one of
a number of young gentlemen of the
Inns of Court, who volunteered to
form the Earl of Essex's life-guard,
which was to consist of a hundred
gentlemen.
R 2
ifºº
244 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
therein, and made up the greatest part of the said guard;
amongst whom were Mr. Richard Fiennes, Mr. Charles
Fleetwood (afterwards Lieutenant-General), Major-General
Harrison," Colonel Nathaniel Rich, Colonel Thomlinson,
Colonel Twisleton ’’ [who, as we have seen, as well as Fleet-
wood, commanded a regiment of horse at Dunbar”],“Colonel
Boswell, Major Whitby, and myself, with divers others.”
Ludlow was ten years younger than Ireton, who, after
having devoted some time and attention to the study of the
law, left the Inns of Court long before Ludlow came there,
and went to reside on his family estate in Nottinghamshire,
where he was the neighbour as well as friend of his kinsman
Colonel Hutchinson, and, according to Mrs Hutchinson, “a
very grave, serious, religious person.” When the Civil War
broke out, Ireton was one of the very few gentlemen of
Nottinghamshire (Sir Thomas Hutchinson and his son, the
Colonel, being others) who undertook each to raise a troop
of horse for the Parliament. Almost all the nobility and
gentry of that county—including the Lord Chaworth and
Sir John Byron of Newstead (afterwards Lord Byron), and
all his brothers—were, says Mrs. Hutchinson, “passionately
the King’s.” Ireton was major of a Nottinghamshire
regiment of horse, of which Thornhagh was colonel, which
joined Colonel Oliver Cromwell’s regiment of horse before
the skirmish near Gainsborough, when the King’s troops
were routed, and their commander, Sir Charles Cavendish,
was killed. After this, Mrs. Hutchinson says, “Major
* This appears to contradict com-
pletely the Royaliststories of Harrison's
low origin; since he here is enrolled
first in a company of gentlemen of
the Inns of Court, and then in the
General's Life-guard, consisting of a
hundred gentlemen. Ludlow was
himself the son of Sir Henry Ludlow,
Member for Wiltshire in the Long Par-
liament; and his honesty and veracity
have never been impeached.
* See Wol. I. p. 365 of this History.
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 43,
44; 2nd edition, London, 1721.
* Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson,
p. 117: Bohn's edition, London, 1854.
1651.) IRETON'S MILITARY CAREER. 245
Ireton quite left Colonel Thornhagh's regiment, and began
an inseparable league with Colonel Cromwell, whose son-
in-law he afterwards was.” "
Under the “New Model ” of the army, Ireton accepted
the appointment of captain in the regiment of horse com-
manded by Algernon Sydney, who was at least ten years
younger than himself; but he soon rose to be a colonel of
horse, and, at Cromwell’s express request, was nominated
Commissary-General of the Horse, being the next officer in
authority under Cromwell, who was Lieutenant-General of
the Horse. Ireton also, by Cromwell’s express desire,
commanded the left wing of the Parliamentary army at
Naseby. Herefortune went against him, for his wing was
defeated by Prince Rupert, and he himself wounded and
taken prisoner; though, when Fairfax and Cromwell had
gained the battle, he made his escape from his captors.
Some modern writers have asserted that Ireton’s military
knowledge was equal, if not superior, to Cromwell’s. What-
ever his military knowledge might be, he certainly was not
anything like so fortunate a soldier, not only as Cromwell,
but as Lambert. For here, when Ireton had a splendid
opportunity, fortune, which is everything in war, went
against him ; while fortune never went against Cromwell,
and, as has been shown in the preceding volume, the
victory at Dunbar was due very much to Lambert, to
whom Cromwell gave the command of the army that
morning ; but, much or little, it was more due to Lambert
than the victory at Naseby was to Ireton. In fact, Lam-
bert showed at Dunbar something of that rare quality,
military genius, which Ireton, though he may have pos-
sessed it, never, as far as I know, had any opportunity
of showing. - -
1 Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 161 ; Bohn's edition, London, 1854.
246 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
º
I am not making these remarks for the purpose, in
the least, of running down Ireton; but I wish to obtain,
as far as I can, a correct estimate of Ireton’s abilities,
with a view to the elucidation of the question of his
influence upon the mind of Cromwell.
Whitelock’s criticism of Ireton’s “Agreement of the
Deople” was probably influenced by the clause excluding
practising lawyers from Parliament. “The frame of this
* Agreement of the People,’” says Whitelock, “was
thought to be, for the most part, made by Commissary-
General Ireton, a man full of invention and industry,
who had a little knowledge of the law, which led him
into the more errors.” . But when the fear lest Freton
should bring about those reforms which the lawyers
were averse to was removed by his death, Whitelock
speaks of him without disparagement, for he says:
“This gentleman was a person very active, industrious,
and stiff in his ways and purposes; he was of good
abilities for council as well as action, made much use
of his pen, and was very forward to reform the pro-
ceedings in law, wherein his having been bred a lawyer
was a great help to him. He was stout in the field,
and wary and prudent in councils; exceedingly forward
as to the business of a Commonwealth. Cromwell had
a great opinion of him, and no man could prevail so
much, nor order him so far, as Ireton could.”” In
regard to what is said above respecting Ireton’s making
much use of his pen, the numerous papers drawn up by
Ireton are written in a clear, terse, and masculine style,
and display a skilful command of language, as well as
great knowledge and sagacity.
* Whitelock's Memorials, p. 356. * Ilid, p. 516.

1651.] THE ARMY'S REPRESENTATION TO PARLIAMENT, 247
The “Representation from His Excellency Sir Thomas
Fairfax and the Army under his command, humbly ten-
dered to the Parliament, concerning the just and fun-
damental rights and liberties of themselves and the
kingdom, with some humble proposals and desires in
order thereunto, and for settling the peace of the king-
dom,” was chiefly the production of Ireton; and shows
that, as early as June 1647, those who led the opinions
of the army desired, on grounds which are very clearly
stated, “That some determinate period of time may be
set for the continuance of this and future Parliaments,
beyond which none shall continue, and upon which new
writs may of course issue out, and new elections suc-
cessively take place, according to the intent of the Bill
for Triennial Parliaments. And herein we would not
be misunderstood to desire a present or sudden dissolu-
tion of this Parliament ; but only, as is expressed before,
that some certain period may be set for the determining
of it, so that it may not remain, as now, continuable for
ever, or during the pleasure of the present members.
And we should desire that the period to be now set
for ending this Parliament may be such as may give
sufficient time for provision of what is wanting, and
necessary to be passed in point of just reformation,
and for further securing the rights and liberties, and
settling the peace of the kingdom.” ”
Now the grounds on which this is put are so clearly
stated, that the fact of Cromwell’s being a party to
* Printed at Cambridge, by Roger Officers and Soldiery under his com-
Daniel, printer to the University, with mand : J. Rushworth, Secretary.”—
the following fiat: “St. Albans, June Parl. Hist. vol. iii. pp. 615–625.
14, 1647.-By the appointment of his * Ibid. p. 622.
Excellency Sir Tho. Fairfax, with the
248 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
them becomes a most important element in the solution
of that complicated problem, the character of Cromwell.
The grounds are these: “We are so far from designing
or complying to have any absolute arbitrary power fixed
or settled, for continuance, in any persons whatsoever,
as that, if we might be sure to obtain it, we cannot wish
to have it so in the persons of any whom we might best
confide in, or who should appear most of our own opinions
or principles, or whom we might have most personal assw-
rance of, or interest in ; but we do and shall much rather
wish that the authority of this kingdom, in a Parliament
Tightly constituted, free, equally, and Swccessively chosen,
according to its original intention, may ever stand and
have its course; and therefore we shall apply our desires
chiefly to such things, as (by having Parliaments settled
in such a right constitution) may give more hopes of
justice and righteousness to flow down equally to all in
that its antient channel, without any overtures tending
either to overthrow that foundation either of order or
government in this kingdom, or to ingross that power
for perpetuity into the hands of any particular person
or party whatsoever.”
The paper then meets the objection, that the change
of the present Parliament may prove for the worse, as
to the persons elected, with this argument—that the
supreme power, or sovereignty, being “unlimited, unless
in point of time, is most unfit and dangerous, as to the
people’s interest, to be fixed in the persons of the same
men, during life or their own pleasures; ” but that a
change or new election is required, in order “that the
people may have an equal hope or possibility, if they
have made an ill choice at one time, to mend it in
another; and the members themselves may be in a capacity

1651.] THE ARMY'S REPRESENTATION TO PARLIAMENT. 249
to taste of subjection as well as rule, and may be so inclined
to consider of other men's cases, as what may come to be
their own.” -
The paper then declares that in England, “by many
positive laws and antient constant custom, the people
have a right to new and successive elections unto that
great and supreme trust, at certain periods of time;
which is so essential and fundamental to their freedom,
as it cannot or Ought not to be denied them, and
without which the House of Commons is of very little
concernment to the interest of the commons of England :
yet in this we would not be misunderstood to blame
those worthies of both Houses whose zeal to vindicate
the liberties of this nation did procure that Act for the
continuance of this Parliament, whereby it was secured
from being dissolved at the King’s pleasure, as former
Parliaments have been, and reduced to such a certainty
as might enable them the better to assist and vindicate
the liberties of this nation (immediately before so highly
invaded, and then also so much endangered); and this
we take to be the principal ends and grounds for which,
in that exigency of time and affairs, it was procured,
and to which we acknowledge it hath happily been
made use of; but we cannot think it was by those
worthies intended, or ought to be made use of, to the
perpetuating of that supreme trust and power in the persons
of any, during their own pleasures, or to the debarring of
the people from their right of elections totally, now when
those dangers or eaſigencies were past, and the affairs and
safety of the Commonwealth would admit of such a
change.”
The testimony of Whitelock as to the authorship of
* Parl. Hist, vol. iii. pp. 620–622.
250 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
="—
-:
this paper is very important. “In these declarations
and transactions of the army,” says Whitelock, under
date June 16, 1647, “Colonel Ireton was chiefly em-
ployed, or took upon him the business of the pen; and
having been bred in the Middle Temple, and learned
some grounds of the laws of England, and being of
working and laborious brain and fancy, he set himself
much upon these businesses, and therein was encouraged
and assisted by Lieutenant-General Cromwell, his father-
in-law," and by Colonel Lambert, who had likewise
studied in the Inns of Court, and was of a subtle and
working brain.” ”
We have in these two extracts, taken together, some ex-
ceedingly important evidence bearing on the characters
of Ireton, of Cromwell, of Lambert, and of that portion
of the members of the Rump who pertinaciously resisted
the dissolution of that remnant of the Long Parliament.
The first things that must suggest themselves to the
reader of the preceding extracts from the “Representa-
tion’ of the army of the Parliament are, the clearness and
masculine force of the language, and the soundness of the
constitutional knowledge, the more remarkable as coming
from a body of soldiers—soldiers who formed a strange
contrast to the cavalier Wildrakes who were their cotem-
poraries, and a still stranger contrast to the Ensign
Northertons who were their successors. And yet, the
very same state of things which produced the illiterate
! Exactly one year before this time,
Ireton was married to the eldest
daughter of Cromwell; as appears
from the following extract from the
Register of Marriages in the parish of
Holton, near Oxfor 1: “Henry Ireton,
Commissary-General to Sir Thomas
Fairfax, and Bridget, * * * *
daughter to Oliver Cromwell, Lieute-
nant-General of the Horse to the said
Sir Thomas Fairfax, were married by
Mr. Dell, in the Lady Whorwood her
house in Holton, June 15, 1646.”
* Whitelock's Memorials, June 16,
1647.



1651. GENIUS OF CROMWELL AND MARLBOROUGH. 251
brutality of such military men as Ensign Northerton, and
the captain in Hamilton's Bawn—who announced his
opinion to be that
Your Noveds, and Bluturks, and Omurs, and stuff,
By G– they don't signify this pinch of snuff
—produced a certain officer, by name John Churchill,
nearly as illiterate as they ; who, even late in life, owned
that for his knowledge of English History he was chiefly
indebted to Shakspeare; but who, nevertheless, performed
military achievements which proved him to be a man of
the greatest genius, for they furnished examples of the
successful exertion of some of the highest of man’s reason-
ing and inventive faculties. Men have sat on thrones,
on woolsacks, in professors’ chairs; men have shone
in pulpits, in Senates, in courts of justice, in popular
assemblies; men have been commanders of armies, leaders
of political parties, shrewd and energetic organisers of
great popular movements; nay more, men have for a
time been Oracles, dictators in philosophy and letters,
without possessing any extraordinary portion of what
is highest in human intellect. But to win great and
decisive battles, in the face of such disadvantages and
difficulties as were met and overcome by Cromwell and
Marlborough, and to make a proper use of those battles
when won, implies the possession, in a preeminent degree,
of some of the higher faculties that distinguish man as
man. And yet neither Cromwell nor Marlborough could
have written the passages I have quoted from the “Repre-
sentation ” of the army of the Parliament; while he who
wrote it, though an able and well-educated man, and a
good soldier, probably could not have won the battles won
by Cromwell and by Marlborough.
How then is the extraordinary influence which, by the
252 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
concurrent testimony of many witnesses, Ireton possessed
over the mind of Cromwell to be accounted for 2 I think
it may, without injustice to either of them, be accounted
for by the sincere respect entertained by Cromwell for
Ireton's historical and legal knowledge, so much greater
than his own, as well as for his capacity, honesty, and
singleness of purpose. The mode of accounting for this
influence adopted by Clarendon and others, that Ireton
prevailed over Cromwell by his obstinacy, is childish. It
is only weak people who are vanquished by the mere
obstimacy of others. A strong, brave, clearsighted man
like Cromwell would treat what is commonly understood
by obstinacy with very little ceremony; but he would treat
with respect opinions formed deliberately and conscien-
tiously, and supported by sound knowledge and clear and
cogent arguments.
Another thing that distinctly appears, from several
passages in the extract given above from the paper which,
though penned by Ireton, was penned, as Whitelock ex-
pressly declares, with Cromwell's encouragement and assis-
tance, is that Cromwell was at that time decidedly averse
to the perpetuating of the Supreme power in any man or
body of men during their own pleasure; that therefore
Cromwell’s seizing upon that Supreme power by force, and
treating it so far as his own private property as to assume
that he had a right to leave it, whether as an inheritance,
or a gift by will," was a direct contradiction of his own
1 It is commonly stated, on the Richard his successor. But in a pre-
authority of Secretary Thurloe—who, ceding letter of August 25, to Henry
in his letter to Henry Cromwell, an- Cromwell, Thurloe says: “He did by
nouncing the death of his father, the himself declare a successor, in a paper,
Protector, says, “His Highness was before he was installed by the Parlia-
pleased before his death to declare my ment, and sealed it up in the form of
lord Richard successor,”—that Crom- a letter, directing it to me, but kept
well appointed his eldest surviving son both the name of the person and the

1651.] IRETON A CHECK ON CROMWELLS AMBITION. 253
opinions, in this writing deliberately and solemnly ex-
pressed. These observations apply to Lambert equally as to
In fact, the whole of Lambert’s subsequent
career shows him to have been a man devoid of principle,
and, except as a mere soldier, devoid of talent for action.
Cromwell and Lambert were thus both, to a certain extent,
in the power of Ireton, who—having been assisted by them
in those papers, which so clearly set forth the grounds of
constitutional government, and being known to both of
them as a man not to be turned aside from what he deemed
the path of his duty either by interest or fear—formed an
obstacle, which, if not insurmountable, was at least formid-
able, to any attempt on the part of either to concentrate
the supreme power in his own person.
Cromwell.
Besides, Cromwell,
who was a man in whom the family affections appear to
have been strong, liked as well as esteemed Ireton, and
took a warm interest in his wellbeing and advancement.
Mrs. Hutchinson tells a story which is illustrative of this.
She says that Cromwell used his utmost endeavours to
persuade Colonel Saunders into the sale of a place of his
in such a drawer of a cabinet in his
closet they should find his will. But
paper to himself. After he fell sick
at Hampton Court, he sent Mr. John
Barrington to London for it, telling
him it lay upon his study-table at
Whitehall; but it was not to be found
there, nor elsewhere, though it hath
been very narrowly looked for.” This
account appears to me to confirm the
statement made by the Rev. Thomas
Morrice, chaplain of Roger Boyle, Lord
Broghill, and first Earl of Orrery. This
statement is:—“Cromwell had made
Fleetwood his heir; but one of his
daughters, knowing where his will
was, took it and burnt it, before
Fleetwood could come at it. When
Cromwell was asked who should suc-
ceed him, he made no reply; but said,
his daughter had disposed of it else-
where, and so they never came to the
sight of it.”—Memoirs of Roger Earl
of Orrery, prefixed to Orrery's State
Letters, vol. i. pp. 53, 54: Dublin,
1743. Though many of Mr. Morrice's
statements are of little value, even
when made on the authority of the
Earl of Orrery, who had a case to
make out for himself, there can be no
doubt that Lord Orrery had the means
of being better informed than most per-
sons, in regard to some matters relating
to Cromwell and his family; and his
version of the matter above mentioned
may very possibly be the true account.
254 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
called Ireton, “which Cromwell earnestly desired to buy for
Major-General Ireton, who had married his daughter.”
These facts furnish, of themselves, a sufficient answer
to those modern writers, who treat with contempt the
notion of Cromwell’s being influenced by Ireton in this
matter. But the case is yet stronger: for it is to be
remembered that Ireton was at the head of a powerful
army in Ireland, and that Ludlow,” his second in command,
was both an able and hardy soldier, and as firmly opposed
as Ireton to the domination of Cromwell, or of anybody
else. It is true that, if the matter came to the arbitrament
of the sword—as a somewhat similar question had come,
some 1,700 years before, also between a father-in-law and a
son-in-law, at the Battle of Pharsalia—Treton and Ludlow
would have had to fight two men, Cromwell and Lambert,
who were probably greater soldiers than they. Yet, in the
great game of war, it is impossible for any human foresight
to foretell the issue. And though Caesar thoroughly de-
feated Pompey at Pharsalia, it was the opinion of General
Sir William Napier, and of a greater authority, Napoleon
Donaparte, that at Dyrrachium, only a short time before
the Battle of Pharsalia, Pompey had quite outgeneralled
Caesar. When all these things are borne in mind, it will
appear that it is a very shallow view of the question to
treat with contempt the notion of Cromwell’s being in-
fluenced by Ireton. Cromwell knew his situation a little
better than these modern writers, and would have regarded
this mode of explaining him and his schemes as something
even below contempt. I therefore consider it beyond a
doubt, that Ireton was a check, and a very powerful check,
* Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, his appointment in Ireland to Crom-
p. 324 : Bohn's edition, London, 1854. well. See Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i.
* Ludlow, as well as Ireton, owed pp.321, 322: 2ndedition, London, 1721.

1651.] IRETON'S SUCCESSOR APPOINTED. 255
upon Cromwell’s restless ambition, and lust of domination
and self-aggrandisement. But by Ireton’s death Cromwell
was at liberty to pursue the instincts of his nature, in
which the most profound human calculation was combined
with the fierce, quick, restless, ravenous instincts of a
beast of prey. “ Kean’s Richard the Third,” says a
writer who had had an opportunity of observing Napoleon
Bonaparte, “reminded me constantly of Bonaparte—that
restless quickness, that Catiline inquietude, that fearful
somewhat, resembling the impatience of a lion in his
cage.”
The other event, unfavourable to the Parliament, which
I have mentioned as happening about this time, was
connected with the appointment of a successor to Ireton
in Ireland. On Wednesday, the 21st of January 165%,
the Council of State ordered, “That it be humbly offered
to the Parliament as the opinion of this Council, that
Major-General Lambert may be appointed Commander of
the military forces in Ireland, under the Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland, if the Parliament shall so think fit ; and the
Lord President of the Council is desired to offer this to
the Parliament accordingly.” On Friday the 31st of
January, the Council ordered, “That a letter be prepared,
in pursuance of an Order of Parliament of this day, to be
sent to Major-General Lambert ; to inclose the vote of
Parliament unto him, and to desire him to repair hither
in pursuance of the said vote.”
There is so much difference between the account of this
business given in the Memoirs of Ludlow, and the account
of it given in the Memoirs of Mrs. Hutchinson, that
probably either Lambert or his wife—who was, says Mrs.
1 Order Book of the Council of MS. State Paper Office.
State, Wednesday, January 21, 165%, * Ibid. Friday, January 31, 1654.
É
==-----------------
256 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
Hutchinson, “as proud as her husband’—had given some
offence to that austere and haughty matron. And as we
know little of Lambert's pedigree, a matter of immense
weight with Mrs. Hutchinson, further than that he “is said
to have been born of a good family, and to have been edu-
cated for the bar,” Mrs. Hutchinson probably considered it
a piece of high presumption for a man, whom she might
consider as only, at best, belonging to the “underling
gentry,” to aspire to the high place of Deputy of Ireland,
while her husband, Colonel Hutchinson, was never thought
of for such a post. Be that as it may, Mrs. Hutchinson
tells a rather long story, in which Lambert’s “pride” and
“heart full of spite, malice, and revenge,” are made to
bear a very prominent part. But though Mrs. Hutchin-
son’s story is somewhat long, it fails to state the facts cor-
rectly, and therefore need not be repeated. Two sentences
of it, however, as characteristic of Cromwell's desire of
missing no opportunity of advancing himself and his
family, I quote:–
“There went a story that, as my Lady Ireton was
walking in St. James's Park, the Lady Lambert, as proud
as her husband, came by where she was ; and as the
present princess always hath precedency of the relict
of the dead prince, so she put my Lady Ireton below ;
who, notwithstanding her piety and humility, was a little
grieved at the affront. Colonel Fleetwood’” [he was then
Lieutenant-General Fleetwood] “being then present, in
mourning for his wife, who died at the same time her
lord did, took occasion to introduce himself, and was im-
mediately accepted by the lady and her father, who de-
signed thus to restore his daughter to the honour she had
' A phrase of Mrs. Hutchinson. See Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 130 :
Bohn's edition, London, 1854.
1651.] CROMWELL'S CHILDREN. 257
fallen from.” It is observable that, whatever truth or
falsehood there may be in this story, which Mrs. Hutch-
inson gives as she heard it, she mentions “piety and hu-
mility " as virtues really belonging to the widow of Ireton.
And she is consistent in her account of Cromwell’s children.
She says afterwards: “His [Cromwell's] wife and children
were setting up for principality, which suited no better
with any of them than scarlet on the ape. His daughter
Fleetwood * [the lady mentioned above as Ireton's widow]
“was humbled and not exalted with these things; but the
rest were insolent fools.” She afterwards says: “Richard
was a peasant in his nature, yet gentle and virtuous—a
meek, temperate, and quiet man, but became not great-
Iness.”
Mrs. Hutchinson’s testimony on some of these points is
very valuable, inasmuch as she, with a woman’s instinct, has
observed and recorded certain shades of character, which
writers like Ludlow, whose attention was wholly directed
to political and military matters, did not notice, or did
not think worth recording. Her remark that Cromwell’s
children, with the exception of his daughter Bridget and
his son Richard (his eldest son Oliver, who was killed when
young, must also be excepted), “were insolent fools,” con-
firms the stories told about his youngest daughter, Frances,
who appears to have belonged strictly to that class of
women, in whom two ruling passions predominate—
The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.”
Her love of pleasure was manifested in carrying on a
1 Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs of
Colonel Hutchinson, pp. 360, 361:
Bohn's edition, London, 1854.
* Ibid, pp. 370, 376.-His eldest
son, Oliver, who was killed when very
young in a skirmish before the Battle
VOL. II.
of Marston Moor, would appear, from
his father's estimate of him, to have
been a youth of promise.
* The idea of Pope, that, while men
engage in the career of ambition partly
from the love of its very trials and
258 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. XII.
flirtation with Jerry White, one of her father's chaplains,
who was discovered by Cromwell “in the lady’s chamber,
on his knees, kissing the lady’s hand.” When Cromwell,
in a fury, asked “what was the meaning of that posture
before his daughter Frank,” Jerry, with wonderful presence
of mind, said, “May it please your Highness, I have a
long time courted that young gentlewoman there, my
lady's woman, and cannot prevail; I was therefore humbly
praying her ladyship to intercede for me.” The result is
so characteristic of Cromwell that the story may be true,
though Oldmixon, who tells it, is no great authority : yet he
says, “I knew them both, and heard this story told when
Mrs. White was present, who did not contradict it, but
owned there was something in it.” The Protector (the
story says), turning to the young woman, cried, “What's
the meaning of this, hussy P Why do you refuse the
honour Mr. White would do you? He is my friend, and I
expect you should treat him as such.” The young woman,
with a very low curtsey, replied, “If Mr. White intends
me that honour, I shall not be against him.” “Say’st thou
so, my lass?” cried Cromwell. “Call Goodwyn ; this busi-
ness shall be done presently, before I go out of the room.”
Goodwyn came : Jerry and “my lady’s woman * were mar-
ried in presence of the Protector, who gave her £500 for
her portion; and that, with the money she had saved be-,
fore, made Mr. White easy in his circumstances; “ except
in one thing,” adds the narrator, “which was, that he
perils, and are then glad to escape
from it to the quiet and repose of ob-
scurity,
—“every lady would be queen for life,”
from the mere love of domineering,
agrees somewhat with the distinction
of Plato in applying the word āyepaout-
icos to Zeus, and BagiNikos to Juno.—
See Ast's note to Plato's Phaedrus,
p. 110:—“‘Hyegovikov est sensu quem
Stoici posthac nobilitärunt, idea re-
gens, quae principatum omnium rerum
tenet, contra Baquxuköv, id quod potes-
tatem suam regiam manifestat, im-
perio exercendo ; ut dominationis cu-
jusdam significatio in hac voce insit.
Imperiosa enim Juno est.”—Ast.
1651.] LAMBERT'S QUARREL WITH THE PARLIAMENT. 259
never loved his wife, nor she him, though they lived to-
gether near fifty years afterwards.”
The love of sway of this daughter of Cromwell was
manifested in the eagerness she displayed to become
the wife of Charles II. Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl
of Orrery—who, while living with Cromwell, carried on
a secret correspondence with some persons about the
Ring—had discovered that Charles was favourable to
a design “ of making a match betwixt His Majesty and
one of Cromwell’s daughters, the Lady Frances.” But Lord
Broghill failed in all his attempts to obtain Cromwell’s
consent to it. “Upon this my Lord withdrew, and meet-
ing Cromwell's wife and daughter, they enquired how he
had succeeded; of which having given them an account,
he added, they must try their interest in him ; but none
could prevail.” If “the Lady Frances * had accomplished
her wish of becoming the wife of Charles Stuart, she would,
most probably, have become acquainted with a somewhat
disagreeable illustration of the Vanity of human wishes.
While, in pursuance of the Order of Parliament above
mentioned, Major-General Lambert was making great
preparations to go over to Ireland, in the quality of
Deputy to General Cromwell, the commission of the
latter, as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, expired. There-
upon the Parliament took that affair into consideration ;
and many of the members affirmed that the title and
office of Lieutenant of Ireland was more suitable to a
monarchy than to a “free commonwealth.” Neverthe-
less, the question was likely to have been carried for the
1 Memoirs of Roger, Earl of Orrery, Boyle, the first Earl of Orrery, Lord
by the Rev. Mr. Thomas Morrice, his President of Munster in Ireland:”
Lordship's chaplain (pp. 40–43), pre- 2 vols., Dublin, 1743.−Burnet also
fixed to “a Collection of the State Let- states that he had the story from Lord
ters of the Right Honourable Roger Broghill's own lips,
S 2
260 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
i.
ſ
-
=
=
s
––
=
renewing of Cromwell’s commission under the same title.
But Cromwell, says Ludlow, “ having at that time another
part to act, stood up, and declared his satisfaction with
what had been said against constituting a Lieutenant in
Ireland, desiring that they would not continue him with
that character. Upon which, the question being put, the
Parliament, willing to believe him in earnest, ordered it
according to his motion. He further moved that, though
they had not thought fit to continue a Lieutenant of Ire-
land, they would be pleased, in consideration of the worthy
person whom they had formerly approved to go over with
the title of Deputy, to continue that character to him.
But the Parliament, having suppressed the title and office
of a Lieutenant in Ireland, thought it altogether improper
to constitute a Deputy, who was no more than the substi-
tute of a Lieutenant ; and therefore refused to consent to
that proposal, Ordering that he should be inserted one of
the Commissioners for Civil Affairs, and constituted Com-
mander-in-Chief of the Forces in Ireland. In the manage-
ment of this affair, Mr. Weaver, who was one of the Com-
missioners of Ireland, but then at London and sitting in
Parliament, was very active, to the great discontent of
General Cromwell, who endeavoured to persuade the Par-
liament that the army in Ireland would not be satisfied,
unless their Commander-in-Chief came over qualified as
Deputy. Mr. Weaver assured them that, upon his know-
ledge, all the sober people of Ireland, and the whole army
there except a few factious persons, were not only well satis-
fied with the present Government, both civil and military, of
that nation, but also with the governors who managed the
same; and therefore moved that they would make no
alteration in either, and renew their commissions for a
longer time. This discourse of Mr. Weaver, tending to
1651.] CELARACTER OF LAMBERT. 261
persuade the Parliament to continue me in the military
command ’’ [the command-in-chief, which he had held
since the death of Ireton, his own command being that of
Lieutenant-General of the Horse], “increased the jealousy
which General Cromwell had conceived of me, that I
might prove an obstruction to the design he was carrying
on to advance himself by the ruin of the Commonwealth.
And therefore, since Major-General Lambert refused to go
over with any character less than that of Deputy, he re-
solved, by any means, to place Lieutenant-General Fleet-
wood at the head of affairs in Ireland. By which conduct
he procured two great advantages to himself, thereby put-
ting the army in Ireland into the hands of a person secured
to his interest by the marriage of his daughter; and,
drawing Major-General Lambert into an enmity towards
the Parliament, prepared the latter to join with him in
opposition to them, when he should find it convenient to
put his design in execution.”
By the proceeding above described, Cromwell secured the
assistance of the ablest officer in the army, whom he, ac-
cording to some accounts, further bound to his interest by
“ deluding him with hopes and promises of succession ” to
his place and power on his [Cromwell's] death; though Lam-
bert—who, though an able soldier, was a weak politician—-
discovered somewhat late that Cromwell “intended to Con-
firm the Government in his own family.” Sir Walter
Scott, in “Woodstock,” has well expressed the opinion en-
tertained of Lambert by the army : “If Lambert had been
here,” said Pearson boldly, “there had been less speaking
and more action.” “Lambert | What of Lambert?”
1 Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. Colonel Hutchinson, p. 372 : Bohn's
412–415: 2nd edition, London, 1721. edition, London, 1854.
2 Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs of
262 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. XII.
said Cromwell, sharply. “Only,” said Pearson, “that I
long since hesitated whether I should follow your Excel-
lency or him ; and I begin to be uncertain whether I have
made the best choice—that's all.” “Lambert!” exclaimed
Cromwell, impatiently, yet softening his voice, lest he
should be overheard descanting on the character of his
rival,—“What is Lambert?—a tulip-fancying fellow,
whom nature intended for a Dutch gardener at Delft or
Rotterdam | * -
The horticultural tastes of Lambert are noticed by Mrs.
Hutchinson, who never misses an opportunity of having a
fling at him. “Lambert,” she says, “was turned out of
all his places by Cromwell” [when he showed his indig-
nation on finding how he had been swindled], “and re-
turned again to plot new vengeance at his house at Wim-
bledon, where he fell to dress his flowers in his garden,
and work at the needle with his wife and his maids.”
Cromwell, having thus secured Lambert, then set himself
to obtain the concurrence of Major-General Harrison, who,
as well as Lambert, had a great interest in the army.
This he did by working upon Harrison’s fanatical delusions,
telling him that the course he was pursuing was the only
course for securing the speedy advent of the reign of the
saints.” -
We are now in a position to see the extraordinary sig-
nificance of those proceedings of Cromwell which imme-
diately followed Ireton's death. -
* Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs of the North of Lngland; that his horti-
Colonel Hutchinson, p. 372, Bohn's
edition.—The editor of Mrs. Hutchin-
son's Memoirs, in a note to this pas-
sage, says that, from a Life of Lambert
which had been put into his hands, it
appears that Lambert enjoyed a good
reputation among his countrymen in
culture is much spoken of, and that
he is said to have painted flowers, not
to have embroidered them.
* Mrs. Hutchinson's Memoirs of
Colonel Hutchinson, p. 262, Bohn's
edition; Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp.
563–566: 2nd edition, London, 1721,

1651.] MEETING AT THE SPEAKER'S HOUSE. 263
About a week after the execution of King Charles, it
had been settled, Cromwell being one of the consenting
parties to that settlement, that the “office of a King in
this nation was unnecessary, burthensome, and dangerous,”
and the abolition of that office was voted accordingly." It
appears, however, that between February 1649 and De-
cember 1651, Oliver Cromwell saw reason to change his
opinions on this important point. For on the 10th of
December 1651—and, what is very remarkable, only two
days after he received the news of Ireton’s death, which
reached London on the 8th of December—“Cromwell,”
says Whitelock, “desired a meeting with divers Members
of Parliament, and some chief officers of the army, at the
Speaker's house; and, a great many being there, he pro-
posed to them, that now, the old King being dead, and
his son being defeated, he held it necessary to come
to a settlement of the nation. And in order thereunto,
he had requested this meeting, that they together might
consider and advise what was fit to be done, and to be
presented to the Parliament.”
“He held it necessary to come to a settlement of the
nation.” Why? He and his brethren of the Rump had
already fully settled the nation, two years before, in the way
of what they called “a free Commonwealth.” Why seek to
reopen the question of settling the nation? was a question
that, if any of the abler men had been present–Blake, or
Vane, or Ireton, who could never ask question more—would
naturally have been asked. But it is a most significant
feature of the business that this meeting was called within
fourteen days after Ireton’s death, and just two days after
the news of that event had reached London; and that none
* Commons' Journals, February 7, 1643.
264 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
of the statesmen of the Council of State were present at
it, as appears by the names of those who spoke, given by
Whitelock. - .*
On the proposition, thus propounded by Cromwell, a
discussion took place; and it is remarkable that the point
of importance in this discussion is a totally distinct one
from that which formed the subject of the division of the
House on the 18th of November, just twenty-two days
before. The point is raised thus:—
Whitelock-º' I should humbly offer, in the first place,
whether it be not requisite to be understood in what way
this settlement is desired—whether of an absolute republic,
or with any mixture of monarchy 9”
Cromwell.—“My Lord-Commissioner Whitelock hath
put us upon the right point; and, indeed, it is my meaning
that we should consider whether a republic, or a mixed
monarchical government, will be best to be settled; and
if anything monarchical, then in whom that power shall
be placed?” -
Whitelock—“There may be a day given for the King's
eldest son, or for the Duke of York, his brother, to come
in to the Parliament; and, upon such terms as shall be
thought fit and agreeable both to our civil and spiritual
liberties, a settlement may be made with them.” -
Cromwell.—“That will be a business of more than ordi-
nary difficulty ; but really, I think, if it may be done with
safety, and preservation of our rights, both as Englishmen
and as Christians, that a settlement of somewhat with
monarchical power in it would be very effectual.”
“Generally,” adds Whitelock, “the soldiers were against
anything of monarchy; the lawyers were generally for a
mixed monarchical government, and many were for the
Duke of Gloucester to be made King. But Cromwell still

1651.] A SETTLED QUESTION REOPENED. 265
put off that debate, and came off to some other point; and
in conclusion, after a long debate, the company parted
without coming to any result at all; only Cromwell dis-
covered, by this meeting, the inclinations of the persons
that spake, for which he fished, and made use of what he
then discovered.”
Now, it is certainly a strange proceeding that, not two
years after the Government had been settled as what they
called “an absolute republic without any mixture of mon-
archy,” one of those who had been a party to that settle-
ment, and who in his individual character was certainly
not a limb of the sovereign power in England, which sove-
reign power was then the Parliament, should take upon him
to call a meeting for the express purpose of considering
the expediency of changing the Government. Was not
this proceeding, in itself, an act of high treason against the
State? It was open to Cromwell to have propounded his
question in the Parliament: but to propound it at a private
meeting—for such this was, though held at the Speaker’s
house—was, to say the least, a most questionable proceed-
ing. In fact, what Vane said on a subsequent occasion seems
quite applicable to this proceeding—“This is not honest
Yea, it is against morality and common honesty!”
There are certain important considerations, connected
with this matter, which a man so clearsighted and Saga-
cious as Cromwell could hardly have overlooked, had not
his mind been, as it were, fascinated by the idea which had
taken possession of it—the idea of transferring the king-
ship of England, Scotland, and Ireland from the family of
Stuart to the family of Cromwell. Coleridge, in the course
of his admirable analysis of the character of Pitt, says:
1 Whitelock's Memorials, p. 516.
266 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
“The influencer of his country and of his species was a
young man, the creature of another's predetermination,
sheltered and weather-fended from all the elements of ex-
perience; a young man whose feet had never wandered,
whose eye had never turned to the right or to the left,
whose whole track had been as curveless as the motion of
a fascinated reptile.” Great as was the difference, in other
respects, between the characters and the careers of Pitt
and Cromwell, in this one momentous particular the fate
of the veteran statesman-soldier—the man who had fought
his way to power, in a long series of battles, won by daring
that never failed in the hour of trial, and by sagacity that
was never at fault—resembled that of the man who, by an
education which, according to Coleridge, though it des-
troys genius will often foster talent, acquired a premature
and unnatural dexterity in the combination of words—a
dexterity diverting his attention from things, from present
objects, obscuring his impressions, and deadening his
genuine feelings—and who persuaded himself and the
Ination, that extemporaneous arrangement of sentences was
eloquence, and that eloquence implied wisdom. Thus, by
becoming the slave of one tyrant idea, the man whose life
had been so stormy, so diversified, so full of experience,
died, as it were, to his former self; so that the experience
of all that stormy and eventful past was lost to him, and he
became like a man “to whom the light of nature had
ºpenetrated only through glasses and covers; who had had
the sun without the breeze; whom no storm had shaken ;
on whom no rain had pattered; on whom the dews of
Heaven had not fallen;–whose whole track had been as
curveless as the motion of a fascinated reptile.”
How otherwise could a man like Cromwell have
overlooked the consequences of such actions as he now

1651.] COMMITTEE OF THE ADMIRALTY OR NAVY. 267
meditated? The army and navy had sworn to the terms of
the Covenant, which bound them equally to the King and
to the Parliament. If therefore the Parliament, to which
they had pledged obedience, should be destroyed, there
still remained the royal party to that engagement, which
party would then have no rival claimant on their duty;
for Cromwell was neither of the two parties specified in it.
The state of the controversy would thereby be totally
changed, as Whitelock very fairly told Cromwell; though
without effect, as might be expected, on a man who was
infatuated—whose mind was, as I have said, fascinated—by
One idea, which had obtained uncontrollable dominion
Over him.
On Monday the 1st of December 1651 the members of
the Council of State present were the following. I tran-
scribe the list in the form and order given in the Order
Book:-
Mr. Sergeant Bradshaw Sir Gilbert Pickering
Sir Peter Wentworth Mr. Carew
Colonel Stapeley Mr. Burrell
Mr. Masham Mr. Herbert
Colonel Downes Mr. Salwey
General Blake Mr. Hay
Sir Henry Vane Mr. Gurdon
Mr. Scott Colonel Wauton
Colonel Morley Colonel Purefoy
Mr. Holland Mr. Nevill
Earl of Pembroke Mr. Dixwell
Lord Wiscount Lisle Sir William Masham
Mr. Martyn Sir William Constable
Mr. Challoner Lord-General Cromwell
Mr. Bond (In all twenty-nine.)
268 - COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
i--
------
The following were their first proceedings:–
“That there shall be now chosen a President of the
Council.”
“That a President shall now be chosen, to continue
until this day month.”
“That Mr. Sergeant" Bradshaw be President of the
Council for the time expressed in the former vote”—i.e.,
“until this day month.”
“That Mr. Scott do acquaint Colonel Blake” with the
intelligence which he hath received, concerning the sending
of some ammunition from Holland to the rebels in Ireland,
to the end he may appoint some ships to prevent it, if
possibly they can.”
“Memorandum.—All the members of the Council who
were here present this day did take the oath of
secrecy.”
On the following day, the 2nd of December 1651, the
number present was twenty-eight. The business on that
day consisted chiefly of the appointment of the various
Committees, and settling the “Orders for regulating the
Council, made 2nd December 1651,” some of which
were the same as those before given. Those which were
new I will give in a subsequent page.
On Thursday, the 4th of December, the Committee for
carrying on the Affairs of the Admiralty was appointed.
As this Committee may be considered the governing body
which laid the foundation of the naval power of England,
so great was the importance of the actions of the English
* This word is written sometimes only “Colonel,” although he was “Ge-
with a g, sometimes with a 7. neral-at-sea.”
* It will be observed that Blake is * Order Book of the Council of State,
sometimes styled “Colonel,” sometimes Monday, December 1, 1651, MS. State
“General;” his rank in the army being Paper Office.
1651.] AN ASSISTANT TO MILTON APPOINTED. 269
navy during the ensuing year, I will transcribe the minute
of the Order of the Council of State appointing the Com-
mittee, and containing the names of the members com-
posing it :—
“That Sir Henry Vane, Mr. Chaloner, Mr. Bond, Lord-
Commissioner Whitlocke, Lord-Commissioner Lisle,
Colonel Wauton, Colonel Purefoy, Lord-General [Crom-
well], Colonel Blake, Colonel Martin, Mr. Nevill, Colonel
Morley, Mr. Masham, Mr. Burrell, and Colonel Stapley,
or any three or more of them, be a Committee for carrying
on the Affairs of the Admiralty, according to the powers
formerly given to that Committee.” "
The following names are added in the margin of the
Order Book: “Sir William Masham, added 17th August;
Sir Peter Wentworth, Mr. Scott, added 19th August.”
On the following day (Friday, the 5th of December,
1651), the Council of State made the following order,
which I transcribe, as an example of their unremitting
vigilance in the performance of their duties, and their
attention to minute details:–
“That three small vessels, not exceeding 120 tons each
vessel, be built to ply among the sands and the flats, for
the securing those parts from pirates and sea-rovers,
which do much infest and annoy the merchant-ships
there trading.”.”
On Thursday the 11th of March 1654, the Council of
State ordered, “That Mr. Weckerlyn be appointed Secre-
tary Assistant for the business of Foreign Affairs, and shall
have the sum of £200 per annum allowed unto him.” ”
There are various minutes expressive of the Council of
1 Order Book of the Council of State, * Ibid. December 5, 1651.
Tuesday, December 4, 1651, MS. State * Ibid. Thursday, March 11, 165}.
Paper Office.
270 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII.
--
State’s sense of the services of Milton, to whom an assist-
ant was here appointed, though the designation is usually
“Secretary for Foreign Languages,” not (as in the minute
given above) “for the business of Foreign Affairs.” Thus,
on the 18th of June 1651, the Council made the following
minute :-‘‘The Council, taking notice of the many good
services performed by Mr. John Mylton [sic], their Secretary
for Foreign Languages to this State and Commonwealth,
particularly of his Book in vindication of the Parliament
and people of England against the calumnies and inven-
tions of Salmasius, have thought fit to declare their re-
sentment [sense] and good acceptance of the same ; and
that the thanks of the Council be returned to Mr. Mylton,
and their sense represented in that behalf.”
In the beginning of the year 1652, John Lilburne again
makes his appearance for a moment. Lilburne having
joined in a petition with Josiah Prymate to the House,
against Sir Arthur Haselrig–complaining of Haselrig’s
great oppression and tyranny, in seizing On certain col-
lieries in the county of Durham, and - overawing and
directing the Commissioners to whom he had applied for
relief—the said petition was, on the 16th of January 165%,
voted false, malicious, and scandalous, and Ordered to be
burnt by the common hangman. Prymate and Lilburne
were fined each £3,000, for the use of the Commonwealth ;
£2,000 to Sir A. Haselrig, for damages; and £500 apiece
to the Commissioners before whom the cause had been
heard. Prymate was also committed to the Fleet till pay-
ment should be made ; and Lilburne was ordered to be
banished out of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the terri-
tories thereto belonging, and to suffer death in case of his
* Order Book of the Council of State, June 18, 1651, MS. State Paper
Office,
1652.] JOHN LILBURNE. 271
return." The Parliament had thus got rid of their formid-
able enemy Lilburne for the present, or, as they perhaps -
thought, for ever. But in that point they found themselves
mistaken. For the unconquerable Lilburne returned, in
defiance of their penalty of death, was again tried, and
again acquitted. But, notwithstanding his acquittal, he
was sent a prisoner by Cromwell to Elizabeth Castle, in
the Isle of Jersey; from which, being far gone in a con-
sumption, he was finally liberated, but only to die. He
died in August 1657, at the age of 39—a memorable exam-
ple of integrity, ability, and courage, which, from the want
of certain other qualities, may almost appear to have been
bestowed in vain.
In March 1652 the Island of Barbadoes, which had
adhered to the royal cause, and had also protested
against and determined to resist the Navigation Act,
was reduced to the obedience of the Parliament by Sir
George Ayscue. The fleet under Sir George Ayscue,
appointed for this purpose, was for a short time diverted
from its original destination, and Ordered to make a
part of the force under Blake for the reduction of the
Scilly Islands. The words of the Order Book of the
Council of State thus set forth the proceeding :-
“That it be reported to the Parliament, that this
Council, in pursuance of the Act of Parliament for the
reducing of the Barbadoes, did cause to be prepared a fleet
of ships for that service, consisting of seven sail, under
the command of Sir George Ayscue.”
“That when the fleet aforesaid was ready to set sail,
in prosecution of the said voyage, there being an oppor-
tunity offered for the reduction of Scillies, the Council
Parl. Hist, vol. iii. p. 1377.
272 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XII,
F=
se
•=
e
-E
#
thought fit to make use of that fleet for the said service
at Scillies. And were instrumental for effecting the
same.” - *
“That there are aboard the said fleet many persons
that were banished thence, and who had suffered much
for their fidelity and good affection to this Commonwealth,
who expect their passage thither in the said fleet.”
The character which Clarendon has given of this Sir
George Ayscue (or Ascue, as he writes it) may be taken
as an example of that writer's manner of drawing cha-
racters. “Ascue,” he says, “ was a gentleman, but had
kept ill company too long, which had blunted his under-
standing, if it had been ever sharp; he was of few words,
yet spake to the purpose, and to be easily understood.””
Observe the contradiction here. Lord Clarendon doubts
if Ayscue's understanding had been ever sharp ; yet he
describes him as a man of few words, who spoke
to the purpose. And he was, on the whole, a very suc-
cessful commander. The inference then is, that he was
a very able man, whose understanding was not blunted
by the “ill company ” he kept; as if the company of
Blake, and Vane, and Cromwell would have been more
likely to blunt a man’s understanding than the company
of King Charles, James Duke of York, and Prince
Bupert l—which were surely a strange conclusion.
, Order Book of the Council of State, June 12, 1651, MS. State Paper
Office.
* Continuation, vol. ii. p. 354, 8vo, Oxford.
CHAPTER XIII.
IT has been shown, in a preceding chapter," that the
Council of State of the Commonwealth of England, in
their selection of Oliver St. John as their Ambassador
Extraordinary to the United Provinces, were as much
aware of the importance of that part of their duty which
was (to use the words of Blake) “to keep foreigners
from fooling us,” as they showed themselves awake, in
the selection of Blake as their Admiral, to that other
and still more important branch of their duty, which
was “to keep foreigners from thrashing us.” The con-
summate falsehood of the Italian and Spanish politicians
of the 16th century was by no means extinct in the 17th
century. The power of that Spanish monarchy, indeed,
which had formed the design of becoming master of the
whole world, by the systematic use of disciplined brigands,
colossal falsehoods, and sacerdotal cruelty, had fallen, as
it would seem, to rise no more. A part of its power,
and a part also of its ambition, had passed to those
tenants of the Netherland swamps, who had fought so
long and so bravely against its tyranny, and now formed
the Dutch Republic. Some sixty years before, when
Elizabeth Tudor was Queen of England, and was engaged
in a war against the Spanish wyrant, “English sol-
diers and negotiators”—to borrow the apt words of a
modern historian, whose laborious researches have laid
open many mysteries of iniquity—“went naked into a
| Chapter IX.
VOL. II. T
==
-==
*
274 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
contest with enemies armed in a panoply of lies.” E
do not believe that the 17th century differed much from
the 16th, generally, as regards the matter of falsehood.
A considerable resemblance might, indeed, probably be
shown to exist between the character of Louis XIV. of
France and that of Philip II. of Spain. But during those
years of the 17th century in which England was under that
Government called the Commonwealth, neither Dutchman,
nor Frenchman, nor Spaniard, nor Italian could gain any
advantage, either in diplomacy or war, against those states-
men, so skilful
to unfold,
The drift of hollow States, hard to be spell’d,
Then to advise how war may best upheld
Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold.”
The statesmen who composed the English Council
of State were men far too clearsighted to be deceived
by the expedient resorted to by the Dutch, of sending
over to England ambassadors-extraordinary under the
pretence of treating about peace. The Dutch writers
themselves admit that this measure of sending ambas-
sadors-extraordinary was but an expedient to gain time,
in order to make better preparation for war. “But,”
says the author of the “Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,”
son of the great Dutch Admiral, Martin Harpertz Tromp,
“in regard the late long war they had had with Spain,
had not yet given them time enough to recover their
* Motley's History of the United
Netherlands, vol. ii. p. 356.
* Milton's Sonnet to Sir Henry
Vane.—The writer of “The Life and
Death of Sir Henry Vane, Kt.”
(printed in the year 1662, small 4to),
who was a personal friend of Sir
Henry Vane, at p. 93 of his work,
mentions this Sonnet as having been
sent to Vane, “July 3, 1652,” And
the words he uses are curious, as
showing that Milton was at that time
really a “mute inglorious Milton.”
He speaks of the sonnet as “a paper
of verses, composed by a learned gen-
tleman, and sent him, July 3, 1652.”
1651.] THE DUTCH AMBASSADORS. 275
strength, they chose rather to temporise awhile with
England, than to embroil themselves hastily in a new
war. They, therefore, employed all sorts of means ima-
ginable to divert that storm, by hastening to send ambas-
sadors into England. Accordingly, Heers Cats, Schaap,
and Vanderperre were despatched to London in that
quality, who were received there with great honours,
but yet in such a manner as gave no promise of a happy
issue of their negotiation.”
The admission on the part of the Dutch, that “ their
ambassadors were received with great honours, but yet
in such a manner as gave no promise of a happy issue
of their negotiation,” proves that, in the punctilious
courtesy with which the English Council of State treated
the Dutch Ambassadors, there was no thought of imitating
the Spanish falsehood of Philip II. of Spain, or the Italian
falsehood of his general, Alexander Farnese. Not that
such an imitation was by any means impossible for men
born in England’s “cold and cloudy clime,” as the feats of
two individuals, by name George Monk and Oliver Crom-
well, fully proved. These two men—like those members
of Charles II.'s Pension Parliament, who, according to
Andrew Marvell, “never lied more than when they pro-
fessed to speak the sincerity of their hearts”—while
wearing the demeanour of plain blunt soldiers, could,
and habitually did, use as much dissimulation as the
greatest Italian or Spanish masters of the art.
Both Cromwell and Monk have had unqualified ad-
mirers; and we need not wonder if they had, since
tyranny, maintained by ability and courage, has never
* The Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, to petition for a New Parliament.”—
p. 12: London, 1697. Marvell's Works, vol. ii. p. 555; 4to,
* “A Seasonable Argument to per- London, 1776.
suade all the Grand Juries in England
T 2
276 COMMONWFALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
wanted panegyrists; and the writers who applaud strong
^nergetic tyrants may, like the Greek sophist who wrote a
panegyric on Busiris, indulge the ambition of soaring
above Vulgar prejudices. But, after all, truth is truth,
and honour is honour; and it will not be ten thousand
treacherous tyrants, nor ten million apologists of their
crimes, who will be able to make falsehood pass for truth,
villany and baseness for integrity and honour. Monk,
indeed, has no pretensions to the dignity of the great
gamesters who play for empire with loaded dice. He
can soar no higher than the sale of a nation for a dukedom
and a large sum of money; and the honour of having
inscribed on his monument, “ Vendidit hic auro patriam.”
It would be a waste of time to argue with such a man's
panegyrists—as much as to argue the question of selling
one’s country, with that profound and unprejudiced poli-
tician, who, when charged with selling his country, replied
by thanking God that he had a country to sell !
The English Parliament having, as we have seen, soon
after the Battle of Worcester, passed an Act known as the
Navigation Act," forbidding the importation of merchan-
dise in other than English ships, the Dutch—who, as being
at that time the great carriers of Europe, saw that they
would be thereby losers to a great amount—resolved to
send ambassadors to the English Parliament, to endeavour
* It may be mentioned, as one ex-
ample, amid innumerable others, of the
ignorance generally prevalent respect-
ing this period of English History, that
the Navigation Act is cited by modern
writers, generally well informed, as
having been passed under the Govern-
ment of the Protector Cromwell. The
writer of the “Life of Cornelius Van
Tromp” (London, 1697)—which work,
though that is not stated either in the
preface or on the titlepage, appears to
be a loose translation of the Dutch
“Leven Van Tromp,” cited by Mr.
Granville Penn (vol. i. p. 499)—speaks
of the Government of England as if it
had passed at once from the tyranny of
the Stuarts to that of the Protector
Cromwell.— Life of Cornelius Van
Tromp, p. 11. -
1651.] RECEIVED WITH PUNCTILIOUS COURTESY. 277
to obtain their former advantages, and to desire that
alliance with the English Commonwealth which, before
the Battle of Worcester, they had haughtily refused.
Their object in sending these ambassadors was, however,
chiefly to gain time to complete their preparations for
war, and, according to a cotemporary writer, “partly
also to inform themselves what naval forces the English
had ready, and how the people here were contented with
the Government.” The proceedings of the Council of
State contain some indications Ominous of what was to
follow. The Dutch Ambassadors were, however, received
with punctilious courtesy.”
On the 16th of December 1651 the Council of State
made an order, “That Sir Oliver Fleming, Master of the
Ceremonies, do repair unto Gravesend, to the Lords Am-
bassadors from the high and mighty Lords the States-
General of the United Provinces, and bring them up
to-morrow to Sir Abraham Williams's house. And he
is to give notice of their coming to the Members of
the Council who are appointed to meet them, that they
may accordingly do it.”
On Tuesday the 30th of December 1651, the Council
of State ordered, “That audience shall be given to the
Lords Ambassadors from the States-General of the United
* Hobbes's Behemoth, p. 286 : Lon-
don, 1682.
* This account is confirmed by the
Dutch author of the “Life of Cornelius
Van Tromp," p. 12, in a passage which
I will quote presently.
* Order Book of the Council of
State, Tuesday, December 16, 1651.
MS. State Paper Office.—On January
8, 165%, there is an order—“That the
sum of £235 88, 9d., due unto Mr.
Starkey upon accompt, for the enter-
taining of the Lords Ambassadors
from the United Provinces, be paid
unto him by Mr. Frost.” On the
same day, the Council order £20 to
be paid for Mr. Starkey for his own
pains. There are also other payments
for “carriage and portage of goods,
and for attendance, &c. on the said
Dutch ambassadors.”—Ibid. January
8, 165}.
278 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
Provinces upon Thursday next in the afternoon, and Sir
Oliver Fleming is to give them notice hereof.”
On the 1st of January 1654, the Parliament had agreed
to certain Resolutions as to the manner of giving audience
to ambassadors, agents, and other public ministers from
foreign States. The first of these Resolutions was : “That
Ambassadors, ordinary and extraordinary, sent from Com-
monwealths, Kings, Princes, and States, be admitted to
public audience in Parliament, so often as the Parliament
shall think fit.” The second Resolution was : “That all
other public ministers, under the quality of ambassadors,
have audience by a Committee of Parliament, sent out of
the Parliament for that purpose, who are to return and
tender their report before the House rise.” The third Re-
solution was, “That the day and hour be appointed by
Parliament.” But, as appears by the Order of the Council
of State last given, the Parliament sometimes left the
appointment of the day and hour to the Council of State.
The fourth Resolution was, “That the late House of Lords
be the place for the Committees of Parliament to give
audience in, and to be fitted up for that purpose.” The
fifth Resolution was : “That it be referred to the Council
of State to take especial care to provide convenient hang-
ings for this house; and that the suit containing the story
of 1588” [the Spanish Armada] “be reserved for the service
of the State, and hung up in the late House of Lords.”
In accordance with the Order of the Council of State,
given above, on Thursday the 1st of January 165%, the Am-
bassadors from the States-General of the United Provinces
arrived in Palace Yard, and were ushered into the presence
of that Assembly, which now held the place that, when their
1 Order Book of the Council of Paper Office. *
State, December 3, 1651, MS. State * Parl. Hist, vol. iii. pp. 1360, 1361.

1651.] AUDIENCE GIVEN TO THE AMBASSADOR.S. 279
countrymen came to England in 1585, had been filled by
Elizabeth Tudor,
Girt with many a baron bold,
And gorgeous dames and statesmen old.
On the 24th of December 1650, the Council of State had
ordered, on the occasion of audience being given to the
Ambassador from Spain, that there should be “a guard of
the horse that are in town, mounted in their defensive
arms; and that such part of them as shall be thought fit
stand in a body at the Broad Place at Whitehall.” It may
be doubted whether the Spanish or the Dutch Ambassa-
dors had ever seen such cavalry as those cuirassiers of the
Parliament of England.
Those Dutch Ambassadors could hardly be ignorant
or unmindful of the great change that had taken place
between 1585 and 1651. Two years before, an engraving
had been published at Amsterdam of the Execution of
Charles I. ; and the ambassadors, in their way to this
audience, might have had to take note, not only of that
formidable body of cavalry, equally remarkable for the
stalwart and veteran appearance of the men, and for the
excellence of their arms and horses; but of the old Hall,
where three years before sat “the stern tribunal to whose
bar had been led, through lowering ranks of pikemen,
the captive heir of a hundred kings; and of the stately
pilasters before which the great execution had been so
fearlessly done, in the face of heaven and earth.”
If we could form to ourselves a tolerably correct picture,
first of the reception of the Dutch ambassadors or commis-
sioners by Queen Elizabeth, and then of that of these
1 Order Book of the Council of * Lord Macaulay's Essay on “Sir
State, December 24, 1650, MS. State William Temple.”
Paper Office.
280 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
==
ambassadors by the Parliament of the Commonwealth, the
contrast between the two pictures would tell us more of
the real history of the life of a nation than volumes of
ordinary history can tell. In the lines quoted above from
Gray’s Bard, the “Great Queen,” as it is the fashion to
call her, is described as “girt with many a baron bold.”
Alas! I fear it would be more correct to say, “Begirt with
many a gallant slave ” “Baron bold !” There was, in-
deed, a time for such a word; but it was not the time of
the Tudors.
“By the Everlasting God, Sir Earl, you shall go or
hang!” said the first Edward Plantagenet, King of England,
to Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and Earl Marshal of
England. “By the Everlasting God, Sir King,” replied
the bold baron, “I will neither go nor hang !” And he did
neither go nor hang. Why? Because he could bring
into the field a force of Norman lances as invincible as the
pikemen of the Parliamentary army of the 17th century.
But between the time of Edward I. and that of Queen
Elizabeth great changes had taken place; and words less
bold, less rebellious, than those of Roger Bigod cost the
Earl of Essex his head. For, any of the nobility who re-
tained the smallest portion of the spirit of the Anglo-
Norman barons, had not the consolation of dying on the
battlefield, like Hotspur and De Montfort, but became the
easy prey of the servile subtlety of the crown lawyers.
The royal power, whether it really was so or not, at least
seemed absolute. Thus, when the Dutch Commissioners
were admitted to an audience by Elizabeth in 1585, as she
passed through the antechamber to the hall of audience,
wherever she turned her glance, all prostrated themselves
on the ground, like Asiatic slaves before their tyrant."
: * It would appear that the whole House of Commons remained either
*#
1651.] CONTRAST BETWEEN 1585 AND 1652. 281
The Queen's counsellors too, even the best of them—the
Secretary Walsingham and the Lord High Treasurer
Burghley—in the presence of that imperious lady, who bore
on her head a small gold crown as the symbol of her office,
notwithstanding their robes of state, had much the look of
being merely, what indeed the word “minister” implies, the
upper domestic servants of the lady blazing with diamonds,
and wearing the gold crown, on whose brow the angry
spot did often glow, making those ministers “ look like a
chidden train.”
The very portraits of the most eminent men who served
or were formed under the Tudors are sufficiently marked
with the “form and pressure * of the time. Who ever
gazed upon the portraits of Burghley, of Coke, and of
Bacon, without being struck by the contrast between the
broad, lofty, statesmanlike brow, and the pinched, cun-
ning, mean expression of the other features; an expression
indicative of the circumstances in which they were placed—
circumstances which, if favourable to the intellectual
development, were unfavourable to the moral develop-
ment of man 2 For theirs was an age of duplicity and
hypocrisy the most shameless; of crouching servility to
those above, of hard cowardly insolence to those be-
neath.
Great is the contrast presented to us when we turn
to the portraits of the men whom these Dutch ambas-
sadors of 1652 beheld when they were ushered into the
presence of that assembly, some of the members of
in a prostrate or a kneeling posture, some time, Her Majesty was pleased
while Her Majesty made them a to say, “Mr. Speaker, I would wish
speech, unless she were graciously you and the rest to stand up, for I fear
pleased to order them to rise. Thus I shall yet trouble you with longer
in her speech to her last Parliament, on speech.”—King's Pamphlets, Brit.
November 30, 1601, after speaking for Mus., vol. iv., small 4to, Article 15.
282 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
which, if they did not wear a crown of gold, bore on
their aspects the image of manhood and the stamp of
empire. A deep change had evidently come over men's
souls, as well as their fortunes. There was the sombre
stern face of St. John, which they had seen not long before
in their own country, lowering somewhat ominously upon
them. There was the bluff bold visage of Bradshaw.
There was the statesmanlike brow of Sir Henry Vane, sur-
mounting features singularly expressive at once of pro-
found sagacity and wild enthusiasm. But, above all, there
were two men whose eyes, very unlike those of the courtiers
who surrounded the throne of Elizabeth, looked as if they
had never beheld a master, or a mistress who, like Eliza-
beth speaking of Leicester, could have ventured to desig-
nate them “creatures of our own.” They were both of
them men whose faces, once seen, could never be forgotten,
for they were faces bearing that combination of courage
and intellect which is the true stamp of empire. One of
these men was Oliver Cromwell; the other was Robert
Blake.
The House being informed by their Sergeant, that the
Lords Ambassadors from the States-General of the United
Provinces attended to present themselves to the Parlia-
ment, the Sergeant with his mace went to conduct them
into the house. As soon as the Lords Ambassadors entered,
they uncovered themselves, and the Speaker and all the
members stood up uncovered. When the Ambassadors
had come as far as the bar, the Master of the Ceremonies
and the Sergeant attended them, the One on the right hand
and the other on the left, until they came to the chairs
appointed for that purpose, which were placed upon a
Turkey carpet, with cushions in them, and footstools before
them. The Ambassadors then presented their Letters
1651.) ORDERS FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF TREATIES. 283
Credential, which being delivered by the Master of the
Ceremonies to the Speaker, one of the Ambassadors stated
the substance of the embassy. He likewise delivered a
copy, in English, of what he had before expressed by word
of mouth. The Speaker having informed the Ambassadors,
by the Master of the Ceremonies, that he would acquaint
the Parliament with the purport of their embassy, their
Excellencies, attended in the same manner as before, with-
drew.
On Thursday the 8th of January 1653, the Council of
State made the following orders:–
“That Mr. Martin and Colonel Blake be added to the
Committee for Foreign Affairs.”
“That the Committee for Foreign Affairs, or any five of
them, be appointed a Committee to treat with the Lords
Ambassadors Extraordinary from the States-General of the
United Provinces; and that the Lord-Commissioner Lisle
and Lord Bradshaw do take the special care of that busi-
ness; and that they do give Order for all papers to be ready
that may be necessary for the transaction of that work.”
On Wednesday the 14th of January 1653 the Council of
State made the following orders:–
“That all treaties with foreign States and Princes be
managed by papers. And that of all such papers as shall
be given in on the part of the Commonwealth, there be one,
which is to be the authentic one, signed in English, the
other a translate [sic] of it in Latin.”
“That it be declared that nothing be taken as part of
the treaty but what is delivered on paper and signed.”
“That the place for the treaty be in Whitehall.”
“That the five persons of the Committee who shall
* Order Book of the Council of State, Thursday, January 8, 1654, MS.
State Paper Office.
284 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
manage this treaty with the Dutch, according to the Order
of the Council, be the Lord-President Whitelock, Lord
Bradshaw, Lord-Commissioner Lisle, Mr. Bond, and Mr.
Scott.” In the margin, “Lord Wiscount Lisle, added 16th
January ; Colonel Martin, Earl of Pembroke, Mr. Neville,
Sir Henry Vane, Sir William Masham, added 2nd April; ”
“Lord Chief Justice St. John, Mr. Love, added,” the mar-
ginal note does not say when.
The following minute further shows their mode of pro-
ceeding : “That the paper now read, to be sent to the
T)utch Ambassadors, be approved of, translated into Latin,
and sent to the said Ambassadors; the English paper to be
signed, and the Latin to go as a copy.”” ---
The next Order of the Council of State, with reference
to the Dutch business, made on Monday the 2nd of Feb-
ruary 1654, has a very ominous aspect. It was made on
the same day as an order respecting the Paper Office; and
probably the importance of the safe keeping of such papers
as those which are the subject of the following order sug-
gested the other order:—
“That all papers which concern the business of
Amboyna be got together, and brought into the Council
on Wednesday next in the afternoon, to be taken into con-
sideration by the Council.”
1 Order Book of the Council of
State, Wednesday, January 14, 165},
MS. State Paper Office. “That foras-
much as it is not thought fit that the
Lord-President Whitelock should act
during the time of his Presidency,
that there should be a sixth person
added, and that Colonel Purefoy be
that person.”—Ibid. same day.
* Ibid. Friday, February 20, 165}.—
About six weeks before, they had
passed an order, “That Mr. Milton be
continued secretarie for foreign lan-
guages to the Council for the year to
come.”—Ibid. Monday, December 29,
1651. “Mr. Milton’s ” office was as-
suredly no sinecure.
show that a very great number of
papers was sent from the Council of
The minutes
State to the Dutch Ambassadors, all of
which had to be translated into Latin
by “Mr. Milton.”
* Ibid. Monday, February 2, 165}.
1651.] “THE BUSINESS OF AMBOYNA.” 285
Again, on Thursday the 5th of February, there is the
following order respecting the ominous business of Am-
boyna:—
“That the business concerning Amboyna, and also the
debate of what shall be insisted upon by the Council in the
treaty with the Dutch, be taken up on Wednesday next in
the afternoon.”
The “business of Amboyna,” here referred to, and gene-
rally known in English History as “the Amboyna Mas-
sacre,” may serve well to mark the difference between the
Government of James I. and the Government which now
managed the affairs of England. The English, under a
Government which was at once bad and cowardly, had
long complained of oppression on the part of the Dutch in
their East India trade. At last an event occurred which
made a deep and lasting impression on the minds of
Englishmen. In February 1623, Captain Towerson and
nine Englishmen, nine Japanese, and one Portuguese
sailor, were seized at Amboyna, under the accusation of a
conspiracy to surprise the garrison, and to expel the
Dutch; and having been tried and subjected to the tor-
ture—which, under the civil law, was a regular part of a
judicial enquiry, and a common method of extorting evi-
dence from alleged criminals in all the kingdoms of Con-
tinental Europe, and Holland among the rest—were pro-
nounced guilty and executed.” “The accusation,” says
the historian of British India, “was treated by the Eng-
lish as a mere pretext to cover a plan for their extermi-
nation. But the facts of an event, which roused extreme
* Order Book of the Council of Paper Office; Bruce's Annals of the
State, Thursday, February 5, 1653, MS. East India Company, vol. i. p. 256;
State Paper Office. Mill's History of British India, vol. i.
* East India Papers in the State pp. 46–50: 3rd edition, London, 1826.
286 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. ICHAP. XIII.
indignation in England, have never been exactly as-
certained.”"
Be that as it may, we may safely pronounce that it was
an event which could not have occurred, except at a time
when all the world knew that England was under the
government of a profligate coward, who from his child-
hood to his latest hour had never felt one throb of gene-
rous feeling or of mainly indignation; and who reserved all
his favour for miscreants such as Somerset and Bucking-
ham, and all his indignation for those who, like the Ruth-
vens, refused to become the victims and accomplices of his
own monstrous vices and crimes. It followed, as a matter
of course, that the application made to this King, to obtain
signal reparation from the Dutch Government for so great
a national insult and outrage, was totally fruitless. What
cared the Whitehall Solomon for the tortures and the death
of nine or ten Englishmen, who in his estimation were
but gutterbloods, not having in their veins one drop of the
blood of Stuart? But since that dark and evil time a change
had come over the English Council Board, at which one
Robert Blake now sat, instead of George Williers Duke of
Buckingham, as representative of the Admiralty and of the
naval honour of England among the nations of the earth.
On Tuesday the 10th of February 1653, the Council of
State made the following Order:—
“That the Commissioners of this Council, appointed to
treat with the Lords Ambassadors from the high and
mighty Lords the States-General of the United Provinces,
do meet with their said Lordships to-morrow morning,
being Wednesday, at the hour of 9, at the usual place
in Whitehall. And Sir Oliver Fleming, Master of the
Ceremonies, is to have notice hereof, that he may attend
} Mill's History of British India, vol. i. p. 46: 3rd edition, London, 1826.

1651.] WORK OF THE COUNCIL AT THIS TIME. 287
upon the said Lords Ambassadors to the place appointed
accordingly.”
On Thursday the 12th of February the Council made
the following order:—
“That Wednesday next be appointed for the Committee
for Foreign Affairs to bring into the Council a paper of
demands to be made to the Dutch Ambassadors by the
Council on the behalf of this Commonwealth.”
And on the 25th of February the Council of State made
the following ominous orders, at a meeting at which Blake
was present, but neither Cromwell nor Wane:–
“That the paper now read, of demands to be made to
the Dutch Ambassadors, be translated.”
“That the English copy of the said demands be signed by
the Lord President.”
“That it be referred to the Committee for Foreign
Affairs to prepare and bring in on Friday next a demand
to be made concerning affronts dome to this Commonwealth,
now debated at the Cowmcil.”
At this time the Council of State had work enough on
their hands;" for while they presented this undaunted
front to the Dutch Republic, they showed an aspect equally
stern and inflexible to the King of Spain. About a year
before an ambassador from the King of Spain had arrived
in London, and had been admitted to an audience by the
Parliament; to which he had been conducted through
streets lined with that Ironside cavalry—a strong body
* Order Book of the Council of missioner Whitelock be desired, in
State, Tuesday, February 10, 1654, MS.
State Paper Office.
* Ibid. Thursday, February 12, 1653.
* Ibid. Wednesday, February 25,
165}.
* This is manifested in the follow-
ing minute:—“That the Lord-Com-
respect of the many weighty affairs
now in hand, to attend the public
service at the Council, notwithstand-
ing his other employment.”—Order
Book of the Council of State, Thursday,
February 26, 1654, MS. State Paper
Office.
288 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
— T –===.
of them being drawn up “at the Broad Place at Whitehall”
—whose unequalled military qualities threw into the shade
the best troops of his master’s ancestor Philip II.-even
“the famous Terzio of Naples, the most splendid regi-
ment ever known in the history of war.”” The Council of
State on that occasion ordered “a guard of the horse that
are in town, mounted in their defensive arms, and that such
part of them as shall be thought fit, stand in a body at the
Broad Place at Whitehall—Major-General Harrison to see
the order put in execution.” “ The Council were willing
that the Spanish ambassador should see some of that
magnificent cavalry, to whom might have been fitly ap-
plied the term employed to describe the invincibility of
that Republican horse regiment called “the Brazen Wall”
from its never having been broken.
At that audience he had declared the substance of his
embassy to be to express the King of Spain’s great desire
of establishing a peace and good correspondence with the
Commonwealth of England.” There was a condition pre-
cedent, however, on which the Parliament insisted, but
which the King of Spain appeared either unable or un-
willing to fulfil. For, more than a year after the Ambas-
sadors’ audience, we find the following minutes, which show
the high and determined tone taken by the Council of
State :- -
“That it be referred to Mr. Martin and Mr. Nevill to
draw up answer to the first paper of the Spanish Ambas-
sador concerning the murder of Mr. Ascham, and present
the same to the Council.”
* Order Book of the Council of State, December 24, 1650, MS. State
State, December 24, 1650, MS. State Paper Office.
Paper Office. * Parl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 1359.
* Motley's History of the United * Order Book of the Council of
Netherlands, vol. ii. p. 456. State, Thursday, January 8, 1654, MS.
* Order Book of the Council of State Paper Office,
1651.] RAPID RISE OF THE DUTCH NAVAL POWER. 289
“That Sir Oliver Fleming, Master of the Ceremonies,
do carry to the Spanish Ambassador a copy of the Order
of Parliament, whereby it is referred to the Council to
demand a sight of the powers of the said Ambassador of
the King of Spain, and report the same to the Par-
liament.” "
“That the paper that was given to the Spanish Ambas-
sador, to insist upon justice to be done upon the murtherers
of Mr. Ascham, be reported to the Parliament. And the
Lord-Commissioner Whitelock is desired to make the
report.””
And again, on the 10th of November, 1652, the Council
directed a paper to be delivered to the Spanish Ambassador,
“wherein it is to be insisted that satisfaction be given con-
cerning the murther of Mr. Ascham in Spain, by doing
justice upon the murtherers of him.” ” .*
It has been remarked by Lord Macaulay, that the reigns
of princes, such as Augustus and Philip II. of Spain, who
have established absolute monarchy on the ruins of popular
forms of government, often shine in history with a peculiar
lustre; and that the valour, the intelligence, and the
energy, which a good Constitution has generated, being
directed by one despotic chief, seem, at least during the
first years of tyranny, able to conquer all the world. But
there is another process, directly the reverse of this, which
seems to inspire an all but resistless energy into a nation.
This process is exemplified in the case of a nation that
has been long oppressed, and has at last, by a fierce and
desperate struggle, shaken off its oppressors, and recovered
that liberty which it had not known for ages. The French
Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Tuesday, February 17, 1653.
State, Thursday, January 8, 1654, MS. * Ibid. Wednesday, November 10,
State Paper Office. H 652.
WOL. II. |U
290 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
Revolution affords one memorable example. Another is
afforded by the rise and progress of the Dutch Republic.
The Dutch, after a long and desperate struggle, having
succeeded in shaking off the grinding oppression of Spain,
sprang up with marvellous rapidity into the greatest
naval Power, not only at that time in the world, but the
greatest that the world down to that time had ever
seen. The Dutch enterprise, energy, and valour seemed
to promise an indefinite expansion to their colonial empire,
which already, in half a century of liberty, had grown
to be only inferior in extent to that of Spain. And
while their fleets of war were the most powerful in the
world, and their admirals the best the world had ever
seen, their merchant-ships were the great carriers of the
world, not only carrying on the interchange of commodi-
ties between all parts of Europe, but bringing to Europe
the products of the most distant parts of the globe, from
the fish of Newfoundland to the spices and silks of India."
In estimating the value, or at least the magnitude, of a
victory, the genius of the commanders of the vanquished
fleets or armies is an essential element in the question.
One of the greatest generals of any time commanded the
French at Waterloo. But surely the French admirals
who were defeated at the Nile and Trafalgar cannot for
a moment be compared to Tromp and Ruyter, whose
* The Journal kept by Admiral Sir
William Penn, when cruising in
search of Prince Rupert, published by
his great-grandson, Mr. Granville
Penn, in his “Memorials of Sir
William Penn,” furnishes abundant
evidence of the great amount of the
Dutch merchant-shipping. I give the
following extract as curious in the
matter of the flag: “October 26
(1651), Sabbath day.—Presently after
noon here (New Gibraltar Road) ar-
rived thirteen sail of Hollanders, all
from Malaga, bound (as they say) home
under the convoy of young Tromp,
who came in with his flag in the
maintop, which I said nothing to,
being in the King of Spain his port.”—
Memorials of Sir William Penn, vol. i.
pp. 378, 379.

1651.] ADVANTAGES OF THE DUTCH. 291
conqueror's bones lie in an ignominious pit somewhere
near the bottom of the street at the top of which towers
Nelson’s column of victory.
At the commencement of this great struggle, the advan-
tages appeared to be on the side of the Dutch. The
whole of the herring and cod-fisheries, together with the
commerce of almost all the world, had rendered the Dutch
the most powerful nation at sea that the world at that
time had ever seen; for they were probably a greater
naval power than the Spaniards when they fitted out the
Great Armada. They had also greater admirals than the
Spaniards ever had—greater, indeed, than at that time
had ever appeared in the world. The number of their trad-
ing and fishing vessels probably exceeded that of all the
other European nations put together.
The Dutch also were naturally elated by their suc-
cesses against the Spaniards, who before them had been the
greatest naval power in the world; and they had a very
great number of well-trained seamen. The vast confluence
of seafaring men from all the Northern nations of Europe,
drawn by the fame of their commerce, furnished them,
without pressing, with such numbers of able seamen, that
to wage war with them was—particularly when it is con-
sidered that the Kings of Europe more favoured the Dutch
than the English—to wage war against a great part of
Europe. In fact, in the course of this war, their High
Mightinesses (as the title of the Dutch Republic ran) had
the audacity to issue a proclamation, like Napoleon’s
Berlin Decree, against English manufactures, and inter-
dicted all correspondence and communication with the
British Islands, taking upon themselvesto place those islands
in a state of naval blockade. Besides the great number
of ships of war which they possessed at the beginning of
U 2
292 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
the war, such were the riches of the United Provinces at
that time, when Amsterdam and Rotterdam were the great
exchanges of Europe, that even during this war, which
was finished in less than two years, they built sixty ships
of uncommon size and force. The Dutch ships were built
flatter-bottomed, and therefore drew less water, than the
English, and were thus more capable of Sailing among
the shallows, where they often found a secure retreat
when chased by the enemy. The English ships being
built of tougher wood, and with sharper keels, were less
subject to splinters, and fitter to dispute the weather-
gauge, “which,” says an old writer, “they seldom failed
to gain, though not always to their advantage.” "
While for the last fifty years the Dutch had been thus
rising into the greatest naval Power that the world down
to that time had ever seen, the English, under the mis-
government of the Stuarts, had been sinking into a con-
dition of decrepitude such as England had not known
for a thousand years; and it was only since the death of
Charles I., in January 1649, that the able and energetic men
who then took upon themselves the English Government
had full leisure and opportunity to turn their attention
to naval affairs. The success which had attended their
armies, and the promise afforded by the first exploits of
their navy, when they had placed Blake in command of it,
afforded them good grounds for believing that, by due
attention to the administrative details of their naval affairs,
they might now be able to assume a very different tone
* Columna Rostrata, or a Critical
History of the English Sea Affairs;
wherein all the remarkable actions of
the English nation at sea are de-
scribed, and the most considerable
events (especially in the account of
the three Dutch wars) are proved,
either from original pieces, or from
the testimonies of the best foreign
historians. By Samuel Calliber: Lon-
don, 1727, p. 93, 1 vol. 8vo.
1651.] REGULATIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 293
towards the pretensions of the Dutch from that of the
Governments that had preceded them.
I have shown, in the preceding volume,' the peculiar
advantages arising from the composition of the Council
of State. I have shown that the chances of having the
Government administered with ability and vigour were
much greater when the power was placed, as in the case
of the English Council of State, in a really deliberative
Council, in which the President had no more weight than
any other member, and which consisted of such a number
(the number actually present sometimes amounted to
nearly forty)* as would give a good chance of their being
some men amongst them of ability for government, whose
arguments and opinions would determine the deliberations
of the whole body, than when the power is placed in what
is called a Cabinet Council, consisting of a small number;
and of that small number many are mere cyphers, and
domineered over by a man called the Prime Minister, who
may be a man who owes his position to qualities very dif-
ferent from the qualities of a great statesman. It is im-
portant to adduce proofs that the conclusions of this
Council of State were adopted after the most careful
deliberation, and the most ample discussion. The Orders
made by the Council for regulating their proceedings
furnish ample proof of this. One of their orders is, “That
whenever any matter or business is propounded and in
debate, no man shall interrupt it by offering any new
business till that shall be finished, unless such as cannot
1 Vol. I. p. 119. of this Council who are about the
2 Thus on February 27, 1654, the town to come to the Council to-morrow
number present was 38. The day be- in the afternoon.”—Order Book of the
fore an order had been made, “That a Council of State, February 26 and 27,
summons be sent to all the members 1653, MS. State Paper Office.
T
=:
f
294, COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
bear delay.” Another is, “That while any business is in
debate, no members of the Council shall entertain any
private discourse one with another, at the Board, but
attend the matter in debate, that they may give their
counsel and opinion in it as they shall judge fit for the
Commonwealth; and in case any shall so discourse or
speak to one another, the President for the time shall put
them in mind of their breach of order. And the persons
speaking to the business shall forbear to speak till those
private discourses cease and all the members attend.”
It will be observed what careful precautions are taken,_
particularly in that order given before, and requiring that
every matter propounded shall not only be seconded, but
thirded,”—against a great nation’s being driven into mea-
sures that might involve consequences of the most tremen-
dous nature by the will or the passions of any one man. If
England had possessed such a Government as this Council
of State in 1853, it is not too much to say that she could not
have been driven or “drifted,” as she was, into the Crimean
war. Mr. Kinglake says, in his “History of the Invasion
of the Crimea,” that “upon the papers as they stand, it
seems clear that, by remaining upon the ground occupied
by the four Powers, England would have obtained the de-
liverance of the Principalities without resorting to war; ”
but that she was driven into a war, which cost her a hun-
dred million sterling, by the passions and the interests of
one man in France and another man in England,” who
domineered over the feebler members of the Council called
the English Cabinet, somewhat in the way Carteret had
* Order Book of the Council of orders, ante, p. 78 of this volume.
State, December 2, 1651, MS. State * Ante, p. 78.
Paper Office. * Kinglake's Invasion of the
* Ibid. Same day.—These orders Crimea, vol. i. p. 455.
were not given before. See the other * Ibid. pp. 446, 447.

1651.] CONTRAST BETWEEN 1653 AND 1853. 295
done about a century before; for that man may perhaps be
said to have borne, in some respects, a certain resemblance
to Carteret, whose head was always full of Continental
politics, of schemes for humbling the House of Bourbon;
and who, says Macaulay, “encountered the opposition of
his colleagues, not with the fierce haughtiness of the
first Pitt, or the cold unbending arrogance of the second,
but with a gay vehemence, a good-humoured imperious-
ness, that bore everything down before it.”
It is melancholy to think how small an advance man has
yet made in the art of government when he can be driven
to have his blood shed and his pockets picked with impu-
nity by such means as these. Who can wonder at the
success of great conquerors like Caesar and Cromwell in
imposing their yoke upon the necks of mankind, when he
sees such things done by men without the splendour of
their genius or the magic of their great achievements?
Nevertheless the will of one man, even of the most power-
ful despot on the earth, like a Russian Emperor Nicholas,
or of the most able despot, like an Oliver Cromwell or a
Napoleon Bonaparte, has proved itself but a blind guide
compared to a resolution struck out from the grave debate
and conflicting arguments of the band of masculine and
powerful intellects composing the Council of State of the
Commonwealth of England.
In order to obtain all the instruction from the proceed-
ings of this Council of State which they are calculated to
give to after-ages, it is important to attempt to discover
whether their anxious care to ensure every safeguard
against any important resolution’s not receiving the due
attention would extend to such a case as that of most of
the members of the Council being asleep when any impor-
tant business was propounded to them. The order which
296 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
I have transcribed above, that “in case any of the members
shall speak to one another, the President for the time shall
put them in mind of the breach of order, and the persons
speaking to the business shall forbear to speak till those
private discourses cease, and all the members attend,” par-
ticularly the last four words of it, appears to meet even
such a case as this. And the other two orders, “That
whatever is propounded, seconded, and thirded be put to
the question if none of the members speak against it ; and
when a business is resolved by the question, the secretary
shall enter the vote into the book,” appear likely to render
it almost impossible that any business of importance
should pass the Council while “ all the members of the
Council except a small minority were overcome with sleep,”
or were even “careless and torpid.”” How otherwise, in-
deed, can it have happened that this Council of State so
seldom made a false step; that, except in the case of their
trial of John Lilburne, in their administration of domestic
affairs, as well as in their wars, and the management of
their fleets and armies, they displayed such undeviating
good sense and sagacity, and attained such signal success?
History may indeed be pronounced to be nothing better
than an old almanack, if such lessons as are given to man-
kind by the construction, the regulation, and the mode of
action, of this great English Council of State of the 17th
century have been given in vain.
On the 4th of March, in pursuance of an order of Par-
liament of the 25th of February, the Council of State
granted a commission to Robert Blake to command the
fleet for nine months, in the following terms:–
“By virtue of the power to this Council committed by
the present Parliament, we do hereby commissionate you
* Kinglake's Invasion of the Crimea, vol. ii. p. 94. 2 Ibid.
1651.] BLAKES COMMISSION. 297
to hold and execute the place of Admiral and General of
the said fleet or fleets, and you are hereby authorised and
required, &c. &c. . . . And this power to continue for
the space of nine months. Given under the seal of the
Council the fourth day of March 1651 [165}].
“Signed, &c. s:
“PHILIP LISLE, President.”
On the 15th of March, the Victuallers of the Navy were
ordered “to make provisions for 2,500 men more than the
7,500 already declared for; and the provision was to be
made at London and Chatham.””
The Order Book contains a great number of orders
during this month of March relating to the details of the
navy—orders which manifest the unremitting vigilance of
the Council of State at this important crisis. Letters are
Ordered to be written to all parts of Britain, respecting the
providing of iron ordnance for the defence of Portsmouth,
the Isle of Wight, and other places exposed to attack by
sea; “to take speedy care to send all the serviceable and
unserviceable brass ordnance to the Tower of London; ” ”
for the march of companies of foot, and troops of horse, to
the parts where they are required; “for the transmission of
stores of powder, and great and small shot and “match
proportionable; ” “for such repairs and erecting such
forts as shall be found necessary—the soldiers to be put to
work on this—and also the country people to be called in
and set to work,” Lieutenant-Colonel Roseworme to be
1 Order Book of the Council of President for the month following,
State, Thursday, March 4, 1654, MS. signs his name thus—“John Lisle,
State Paper Office.— Philip, Lord President.”
Viscount Lisle, eldest son of the Earl * Ibid. Monday, March 15, 1654.
of Leicester, who was Lord President * Ibid. Wednesday, March 10, 165}.
of the Council of State for this month, * Ibid. same day.
always signs his name thus. The Lord * Ibid. same day.
Commissioner Lisle, who was Lord
298 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
immediately sent down as Engineer to view the places
which are defective; for the sending up to London “all
the loose iron guns that lie along the coast of Scotland in
places of no security; and all the loose iron ordnance that
are to be spared upon all the coast of Scotland; for 500
carriages for guns to supply emergencies.””
The Council’s mode of proceeding is further shown by
the following orders; which, in regard to the care to ascer-
tain the fitness of those ships which had been already so
long at sea “to be continued out two or three months
longer,” exhibit a striking contrast to the neglect of such
a precaution in the case of Blake's fleet, when Cromwell
had superseded the Council of State, and was more intent
upon the intrigues for his own further aggrandisement
than upon the welfare of the great admiral and his sea-
men, and the efficient condition of his fleet :-
“That it be referred to the Committee of the Admiralty
to prepare an account, to be given to the Council, of what
ships are already appointed for this summer's guard, and
the several stations to which they are appointed, and the
time when they will be ready; and likewise to take into
consideration what ships more may be necessary to be set
forth, and what other officers for the commanding of the
fleet may be thought fit to be made choice of; and also
what general instructions are to be given to the comman-
ders of the fleet for the direction of them in their employ-
ments; and to report their opinions to the Council upon
the several matters referred to with all possible speed;
and they are to send for the Commissioners of the Trinity
House, or any other persons whom they shall think fit, to
* Order Book of the Council of MS. State Paper Office.
State, Wednesday, March 10, 165}. * Ibid. March 15, 165}.
1652.] APPOINTMENT OF JOHN THURLOE. 299
advise with from time to time upon any of those
matters.” "
“That all the members of the Council be added, for the
matters above referred, to the Committee of the Admiralty;
and that they do sit every afternoon in the Council Chamber at
2 of the clock.””
“That the Council do proceed to the nomination of a
Vice-Admiral and Rear-Admiral of the fleet to be for this
summer’s service.” ”
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to cause a,
survey to be made of the four ships now with Captain
Penn, which are coming in—viz. the Fairfax, Centurion,
Adventure, and Assurance—of their fitness to be continued
out two or three months longer, if there be occasion, and
to certify the same to the Council.” “
About this time Walter Frost died, and was succeeded
as secretary to the Council of State by John Thurloe, who
was to have “after the rate of £600 per annum.” “Walter
Frost, the son of Walter Frost, the elder, was continued
in his place of assistant secretary to the Council of
State.”
It will be perceived that this was rather less than Walter
Frost had had, his salary having been forty shillings per
diem.” But as Thurloe was to have lodgings in Whitehall,
that would fully make up the difference; that is, provided
Frost had not lodgings rent-free, a fact which I have not
ascertained. However, on the 1st of December following,
the Council of State ordered “That Mr. Thurloe have after
the allowance of £800 for the year to come, for and in con-
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Wednesday, March 24, 165}.
State, Tuesday, March 23, 1653. MS. * Ibid. same day.
State Paper Office. * Ibid. Thursday, April 1, 1652.
* Ibid. same day. * See Vol. I. p. 117 of his History.
300 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
sideration of his attending as Clerk to the Council and
the Committee for Foreign Affairs.”"
“That convenient lodgings be provided for Mr. Thurloe
in Whitehall, for the better enabling him to execute his
place.””
“That it be declared to Mr. Thurloe as the pleasure of
this Council, that no fees are to be demanded or taken of
any persons for any orders or despatches of the Council.”
On the 2nd of April it was ordered, “that Sir Henry
Wane and Sir William Masham be added to the committee
which meets with the Dutch ambassadors; ” and also
“ that Sir H. Wane and Mr. Neville be added to the Com-
mittee for French Affairs.” “
The Council of State saw that it was now time to put
an end to the solemn farce of the negotiation which the
Dutch carried on. On Monday, the 5th of April, it is
Ordered “That in the conference with the Dutch ambassa-
dors it be insisted upon that an answer be given by the said
ambassadors to the paper of demands.”" The demands,
moreover, went on increasing in number, and that grim
subject of Amboyna was never lost sight of. Thus on
Monday, the 12th of April, the Council of State ordered,
“That the several petitions this day brought into the
Council concerning the sufferers at Amboyna, and other
depredations done upon the English in the East Indies by
the Dutch, be referred to the Committee for Foreign Affairs,
who are to take the same into consideration, and thereupon
prepare a paper of further demands to be made of the Dutch
ambassadors, if there shall be occasion, and to bring the
same into the Council.” ” On the same day also an order
was made “to press an answer to the paper of demands,
* Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. same day.
State, December 1, 1652, MS. State * Ibid. Friday, April 2, 1652.
Paper Office. * Ibid. Monday, April 5, 1652.
* Ibid. Thursday, April 1, 1652. * Ibid. Monday, April 12, 1652.
1652.] “THE PROLOGUE TO THE TRAGEDY.” 301
and the 36 articles.” . And on Thursday, the 15th of
April, it is referred to the Committee for Foreign Affairs to
consider of what further proposals and demands are fit to
be prepared to be given to the Dutch ambassadors.” And
again on the following Thursday, the 22nd of April, the
Council ordered, “That it be referred to the Committee for
Foreign Affairs to prepare a paper in answer to the Dutch
ambassadors’ paper this day read to the Council; in which
paper it is to be insisted upon that answer be given by the
said ambassadors to the paper of demands formerly given
unto them from the Council; and to certify the mis-
takes which were contained in their paper this day read;
and further to signify unto them that the Council will ap-
point a conference to be had with them upon the 36
articles, to the end there may be no delay on their part in
the carrying on of the Treaty.” A fortnight after,
namely on Thursday, the 6th of May, there occurs the fol-
lowing minute, which affords corroboration to the evidence
already given that the negotiation was likely to terminate
not in peace but in war:—“That the petition of divers
sea-commanders, mariners, and Orphans, suffering in the
East Indies by the Dutch, be referred to the consideration
of the Committee for Foreign Affairs.” “
It will be needless to give any further attention to the
negotiation with the Dutch ambassadors; while they were
still going on, an event occurred, on the 19th of May 1652,
in the English Channel off Dover, which, says the author of
the “Columna Rostrata,” “was the prologue to the tragedy
that was afterwards acted by the mightiest enemies that
ever sailed upon the Sea.”
On that 19th of May, the Council of State, who had on
the 15th of April ordered men not to be pressed off ships
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Thursday, April 15, 1652.
State, Monday, April 12, 1652, MS. * Ibid. Thursday, April 22, 1652.
State Paper Office. * Ibid. Thursday, May 6, 1652,
302 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIII.
outward bound, made the following order as to pressing:
“That warrants be immediately issued out to the several
captains of ships yet in the river that they forthwith
hasten into the Downs, with power to press men out of
any merchants' ships as well outward bound as inward, so
that they take but a fourth part of the men in each ship;
and none of the officers in such ship are to be meddled
with upon this occasion.” This order had not been made
without the careful deliberation that marked all their pro-
ceedings. In the afternoon meeting of the Council on the
preceding day an order had been made, “That it be re-
ferred to the Committee of the Admiralty to consider how
men may be furnished to the State’s ships, notwithstanding
the prohibition of taking men off merchants’ ships which
are outward bound.””
“That Sir Henry Vane be President of the Council
until this day month.” "
On Wednesday, the 19th of May, the Council of State
ordered:— --
“That Captain Penn shall be Vice-Admiral, and that
Captain Bourne shall be Rear-Admiral, for the summer’s
Service.” 4
“That it be recommended to the Lord-General Cromwell
to give Order to such foot officers in Kent as are with their
forces near the shore, that they be in such a posture that,
if Order come from the General of the Fleet or Vice-Admiral
to that purpose, they may be ready to go on board and
observe such orders as they shall receive from the said
General or Vice-Admiral. And also that such other foot
as are farther off the coast may be drawn nearer in order
to the aforesaid service.” ” +
* Order Book of the Council of 1652.
State, Wednesday morning, May 19, * Ibid. Monday, May 17, 1652.
1652, MS. State Paper Office, * Ibid. Wednesday, May 19, 1652.
* Ibid. Tuesday afternoon, May 18, * Ibid. Same day.
CHAPTER XIV.
THERE is no part of the history of that English Govern-
ment, called the Commonwealth, which has been so
unfairly dealt with as its naval administration. It
would seem as if the memory of it had been cast with
the body of Blake into that pit in Westminster Abbey
yard; and as if those who were not ashamed to do such
a deed thought that they might appropriate to themselves
all the honour due to the wisdom and valour of the great
Admiral to whose mortal remains they had done so mean
and cowardly an insult.
But though the dust of Blake, to whom no writer, to
borrow the words of Samuel Johnson, “ has dared to deny
the praise of intrepidity, honesty, contempt of wealth, and
love of his country,” sleeps not within the venerable pre-
cincts of Westminster Abbey; and though the country
he served so well has given him no monument with effigy
graven by a cunning hand; though it has refused him
even a tomb, as if it made itself a party to the “mean
revenge ’’ which insulted his body, by dragging it from
the place where it had been entombed, as Johnson says,
“with all the funeral solemnity due to the remains of a man
so famed for his bravery, and so spotless in his integrity;”
yet it may be said of Blake, when his deeds and his claims
to honourable remembrance are compared with those of the
many great men entombed within that renowned cemetery
—“praefulgebat, eo ipso quod effigies ejus non visebatur.”
304 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
So likewise the attempts of the men of the Restoration,
to consign to eternal chlivion the great naval achievements
of the Commonwealth, will but recoil upon themselves.
For they will force us to ask why so many writers have
passed over, as a total blank, this by far the most impor-
tant period in England’s naval annals; and what are the
claims of those to whom has been given the credit of all
the great naval achievements of the admirals of the Com-
monwealth P
Let the reader first look on the picture of the Council of
State of the Commonwealth given in the preceding pages:
that Council in which “the persons speaking to the
business in debate shall forbear to speak till those private
discourses cease, and all the members attend.” And then
let him look on this picture of the Cabinet Council of
Charles II. “Lord l’” says Pepys, “how they [the
Council] meet !—never sit down—one comes—another
goes—then comes another; one complaining that nothing
is done, another swearing that he hath been here these
two hours, and nobody come ; ” or the King playing with
his dog all the while, and not minding the business, or
saying something “mighty weak ;” or the Duke of Buck-
ingham, for the amusement of His Majesty, making mouths
at the Chancellor—or “my Lord Chancellor or my Lord
General sleeping and snoring ” the greater part of the
time at the Council table. Such being the Council, what
were the men employed by them? “The more of the cava-
liers are put in, the less of discipline hath followed in the
fleet; and, whenever there comes occasion, it must be the
Old Ones that must do any good. . . . In the sea-service
it is impossible to do anything without them, there not
being more than three men of the whole King's side, that
* Order Book of the Council of State, December 2, 1651, MS. State Paper
Office. -
1652.3 1652, THE GREAT NAVAL EPOCH OF ENGLAND. 305
are fit to command [ships] almost.” Soon after the above
comes a passage in Pepys, on a subject on which the
Restoration might be greater than the Commonwealth—
namely, the matter of new periwigs, gold buttons, and
“silk tops for my legs, being resolved,” says Pepys,
“henceforth to go like myself.”
The year 1652 was, in truth, the great naval epoch from
which the naval history of England dates its origin.
Nevertheless, while some writers have given to Cromwell
all the credit of all that was then done, other writers
have passed over this momentous period as a total blank;
and have given all the honour that belonged to those
great statesmen and their great Admiral, to that reign,
never to be remembered by Englishmen without indig-
nation and shame, when a King of England, while crowds
of unpaid and starving seamen swarmed in the streets of
the seaports, and clamorously beset the gate of the Navy
Office in London, could still spare money from his harlots,
not to pay the starving seamen, to whom it belonged, but
to corrupt the members of the House of Commons; to
that reign when the English people saw a Dutch fleet sail
up the Medway, and burn their ships in their very har-
bours, and when the Dutch cannon startled the effeminate
tyrant in his palace. Those Englishmen whose nature
had not been thoroughly corrupted by debauchery and
falsehood’ might, in that dark and evil time, reflect with
bitterness of spirit on the contrast between that Council of
State, whose fleets and armies had made England famous
and terrible over the world, and that Cabinet Council of
Charles II. whose proceedings resembled those of a pack
of mischievous baboons.
Pepys's Diary, June 2 and 24, * “The year Sixty [1660], the grand
1663. epoch of falsehood as well as de-
* Ibid. October 30, 1663. bauchery.”—South.
V OL. II. X
306 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
While some writers have passed over entirely this
period of our naval annals, Clerk, in the Introduction to
his “ Naval Tactics,” and Charnock, in the Preface to his
“Marine Architecture,” have given altogether erroneous
accounts of the great sea-fights of 1652-3. They have
stated, having no accurate records of the operations to
guide them, that in those sea-fights of 1652-3, the English
did not fight in line, but “promiscuously, and all out of
order.” Whereas we have the distinct and express testi-
mony of Admiral Sir William Penn, that the English fought
in line whenever they beat the Dutch." And not only was
the principle of fighting in line, but also that of breaking the
line, known and acted upon in that famous Dutch war of
1652–3. It appears, from the authorities cited below,” that
so far from the English fleet engaging in line for the first
time in June 1665, and breaking through the enemy’s fleet
for the first time in April 1782, the English fleet performed
both those operations in June 1653. Indeed, it is ridiculous
to suppose that a man of such intelligence as Blake should
have failed to perceive what Lord Rodney has so well
described in his note, printed in the third edition of Mr.
Clerk’s book; Mr. Clerk’s friends having erroneously
claimed for him the idea of breaking the enemy’s line as a
new discovery. “It is well known,” says Lord Rodney,
Pepys's Diary, July 4, 1666; white. This shows that the fleet
Granville Penn, vol. i. p. 401.
* See Sir Joseph Jordan's “Journal
on the Vanguard, 1653,” copied from
the original MS. of Vice-Admiral (af-
terwards Sir Joseph) Jordan, found
among the papers of Sir William Penn,
and printed in Granville Penn’s “Me-
morials of Sir William Penn” (vol. i.
pp. 522–540). Sir Joseph Jordan's
Journal states that on June 2, 1653,
the blue or rear-admiral's squadron
first came into action, then the general's
or red, and then the vice-admiral's or
was regularly formed in line, or (as in
this case) in column. Ludlow says,
“Lawson, who commanded the blue
squadron, charged through the Dutch
fleet with forty ships.”—Memoirs, vol.
ii. p. 466: 2nd edition, London, 1721.
Again, in Monk's report of the action
of July 31, 1653, he says: “The Reso-
lution, with the Worcester frigate, led
the English fleet in a desperate and
gallant charge through the whole Dutch
fleet.”
307
1652.] BREAKING THE ENEMY'S LINE.
“ that attempting to bring to action the enemy, ship to
ship, is contrary to common sense, and a proof that that
admiral is not an officer, whose duty it is to take every ad-
vantage of an enemy, and to bring, if possible, the whole
fleet under his command to attack half or part of the
enemy, by which he will be sure of defeating the enemy,
and taking the part attacked; and likewise defeating the
other part by detail," unless they make a timely retreat.
During all the commands Lord Rodney has been entrusted
with, he made it a rule to bring his whole force against
part of the enemy’s, and never was so absurd as to bring
ship against ship when the enemy gave him an opportunity
of acting otherwise.
52 2
Mr. Granville Penn (vol. ii. p. 358)
by way of still further proof that
the idea of dividing an enemy's line
and defeating the divided parts does
not owe its origin to Mr. Clerk, but
was familiar long before, quotes these
words: “Le duc pouvait aisément sé-
parer wme partie de la flotte de l'autre
et la battre Séparément.”—Basnage,
Annales des Provinces Unies, tom, i.
p. 741; published in 1726,
* I quote this note of Lord Rodney,
which explains the whole subject both
of outflanking and of breaking the line
with admirable clearness and brevity,
from Mr. Granville Penn’s “Memorials
of Admiral Sir William Penn,” vol. ii.
p. 354 : London, 1833. “Here Lord
Rodney,” observes Mr. Granville
Penn, “ has placed the manoeuvre
upon its true ground of sound common
sense acting in a mind moulded to
practical seamanship. What has
given so disproportioned a character
of Sagacity to this operation has been
the manner in which it was presented
to the world by Clerk, who, profess-
ing himself to be no seaman, nor
ever to have been at sea, but fond of
scientifically contemplating naval evo-
lutions in the abstract, was forcibly
struck with the ingenuity and sound-
ness of the idea which had suggested
itself to his mind in his closet, and
proclaimed it in a tone of exultation,
from which he would have abstained
had he been a seaman—a proceeding
not uncommon with persons of inge-
nuity, who hit upon a point in a science
foreign to their vocation, and who are
induced to think that they have struck
out something quite new, because they
are not aware that others have already
thought of it. * * * * That it
was original in Clerk is reasonably to
be inferred, because he had no ex-
ample to guide or instruct him ; but
that Sir Charles Douglas (Rodney's
flag-captain), or Lord Rodney, de-
rived the idea from Clerk, cannot with
any reason be insisted on, now that we
have discovered that commanders
placed in similar circumstances with
those distinguished officers, conceived
and used the idea more than a century
before Clerk appeared.” This last
X 2 t
308 CoMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
=-
==
-
I have not the least doubt that Blake acted on this
principle throughout his career. To do so only required
that amount of Sagacity and courage which Blake pos-
sessed, and which in their highest degree may be called
genius. It may be almost superfluous to add, that the
above-mentioned operation in naval affairs is equivalent to
what is called the “flank movement” in military affairs.
One of the best examples of the operation and effect of
this flank movement in naval affairs, of which what is
called “breaking the enemy’s line” is only one form, is Nel-
son’s mode of attacking the French fleet at the Battle of
the Nile, by placing a part of the French fleet between
two parts of his own fleet, and thus defeating the enemy’s
whole fleet. At the Battle of Trafalgar Nelson’s fleet
accomplished the same object by breaking through the
enemy’s fleet in two places.
Though the real cause of the war on the part of the
Dutch was, to use the words of Hobbes, “their greediness
to engross all traffic,” yet, as this was an argument which
they could not very well put forward, they chose to begin
the war by refusing to strike the flag, or acknowledge the
English dominion of the seas. The Dutch showed good
policy in making the question of the flag the pretext for
the war; since this pretext had the colour of resisting a
tyranny which all the great maritime nations were equally
with them concerned to oppose. -
statement is made to meet the follow-
ing observation, which naturally sug-
gested itself, and which Mr. Granville
Penn quotes in a note : “The only
wonder,” says the Quarterly Review
(No. 83 p. 60), “is that so simple an
operation should not have been dis-
covered, and practised generally, a
century before either Rodney or Clerk
was born. It is only acting by Sea
what Bonaparte did by land, wherever
he could put it in practice.” And, it
may be added, what Epaminondas did
by land, more than 2,000 years before
Bonaparte was born. Steam and gun-
powder may change the aspect of war;
but, under all changes made by steam
and gunpowder, the intellectual su-
premacy of the commander will always
determine the fate of battles.
| Hobbes's Behemoth, p. 287, Lon-
don, 1682; and see ante, p. 116.
1652.] ENGLAND’s CLAIM TO THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG. 309
Sir William Temple carries back the claim of England
to the dominion of the seas surrounding Great Britain as
far as the year 960." What was implied by this dominion
of the seas, as regarded the honour of the flag, is explained
by the 13th article of the Treaty of Westminster (5th
April, 1654), which article is this: “That the ships and
vessels of the said United Provinces, as well those of war
as others, which shall meet any of the men-of-war of this
Commonwealth in the British seas, shall strike their flag
and lower the topsail, in such manner as the same hath
ever been observed, at any times heretofore, under any
other form of government.” Whether or not this claim
on the part of England was as old as the year 960, there
is no doubt that it was old, and had given rise to much
controversy. &
In 1635 had been published the celebrated treatise of
Selden, entitled “Mare Clausum,” which maintains the
right of England to exclude the fishermen of Holland from
seas which England asserted to be her own, in answer to
the treatise of Grotius, entitled “Mare Liberum,” which
denied the right. But the concession to England of the
honour of the flag by the States of Holland, in the treaty
above cited, and concluded at Westminster on the 5th of
April 1654, was the first formal concession of that honour
by any foreign Power.” It may be mentioned, as an example
Sir W. Temple's Introduction to tague:—“My Lord, by your instruc-
the History of England: Works, vol.
iii. p. 103, 8vo. Granville Penn, vol. i.
p. 397.
* Granville Penn, Vol. i. p. 577, Ap-
pendix G.
* The inconveniences arising from
the honour of the flag appear from
the following letter from the Protector,
Richard Cromwell, to General Mon-
tions you are to demand the flag of
such foreign ships as you shall ren-
counter in the British seas, upon
which some doubt hath been how far
the British seas extend. But not
being willing to determine that in our
instructions, we rather put, in general
terms, the British seas only. We
judge there is no question of all the
310 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
of the manner in which this most important period of
English History has been treated by writers even of note,
that Sir William Temple, in his “Review of the Origin,
the Elevation, and the Fall of the Naval Power of Holland,”
passes over in perfect silence the whole of this first Dutch
war, together with all the naval events and achieve-
ments of the Commonwealth; and puts forward the victory
obtained under the Duke of York, in 1665, in the second
Dutch war (which he calls the first), as the blow that first
brought down the Dutch Republic.
While the Dutch, through their ambassadors extra-
ordinary, whom they had sent to London, professed to treat
of peace, they fitted out a fleet of forty sail of men-of-war,
and placed it under the command of their Admiral, Tromp,
with instructions to this effect. Tromp having desired
the States to give him directions how he should behave
towards the English concerning the honour of the flag, the
States asked him how he had behaved on that point in the
time of King Charles. Tromp replied, that when any
English vessels happened to meet them towards Calais or
near the coast of England, especially if the English were
strongest, the Hollanders used to salute them with some
discharge of their cannon, and by lowering their flag.
Thereupon the States left the matter to his discretion;
ordering him to do nothing to the disadvantage of the
nation, or prejudicial to the glory of the State; and that
he should defend their vessels against any that should
attack them." T- - *
Martin Harpertz (Herbert) Tromp was, like his great
sea on this side of the Shagenriffe, war and peace depend on it.—Your
(Skageriff, north point of Jutland); loving friend, &c.” Whitehall, March
on the other side you have need be 18, 1653–Thurloe, vol. vii. p. 633.
tender, and to avoid all disputes of . The Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
this nature, if it be possible, because p. 13, London, 1697.
1652.] MARTIN HARPERTZ, TROMP. 311
opponent Robert Blake, a man who had risen to command
solely by his own personal merits. Yet there was a
strange difference between the two great admirals as re-
garded their early education. While the education of
Blake had been, as we have seen, that of a scholar and an
English gentleman, the education of Tromp had been from
his early boyhood that of a plain rough seaman—one of
that class of men whom the foppery of the Restoration
denominated tarpaulins. Yet, different as was the early
education of the two great admirals, they had many
qualities in common, and may indeed be said to have
been kindred spirits. There is a certain likeness even
in the fearless, good-humoured, and open expression of
their bold bluff square faces; though Blake’s features,
with the short curved upper lip, and finely-chiselled nose,
mouth, and chin, are much handsomer than Tromp's. They
resembled each other too in the homeliness of their
manners, and their kindness to their sailors. Tromp was
unlike Blake in this, that he accepted knighthood and
armorial bearings from kings—namely, from Charles I. of
England and Louis XIII. of France; * but he is said to
have declined every offer to raise him into the ranks of
the nobility.
Tromp was born at the Brill in 1597, and was but nine
years old when he first went to sea with his father, Har-
pertz Martin Tromp, who commanded a ship in the fleet of
Admiral Heemskerk in 1607. Young Tromp was thus
present at the battle fought near Gibraltar, on the 25th of
April of that year, between the Dutch and Spanish fleets,
where the former gained a victory and lost their admiral.
* See the very characteristic portrait Dixon’s “Robert Blake.”
of Tromp in Granville Penn, vol. i. * Granville Penn, vol. i. p. 407,
p. 407; and the portrait of Blake in note 3.
312 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
Some time after, Tromp's father, while cruising off the
coast of Guinea, was killed in an engagement with an
English privateer, and his ship captured. For about two
years and a half young Tromp, it is said, was constrained
to serve the captain of the English privateer as his cabin-
boy. After this he made several voyages on board
merchant-ships. In 1622 he was made a lieutenant;
and two years after Prince Maurice made him captain of a
small frigate. ...” -
In 1629 the celebrated Admiral Piet Hein hoisted his
flag in the ship commanded by Tromp, and went to cruise
against the Spaniards off the coast of Flanders. On the
20th of August the Admiral fell by the side of Tromp, in
an engagement in which three Spanish ships were taken.
His testimony as to Tromp was that he had known many
brave captains, but that Tromp exceeded them all in the
qualities necessary in an admiral. About this time Tromp
quitted the service in disgust, in consequence of considering
himself illused by the Dutch Government. In 1637 Tromp
received a commission to command the fleet as Lieutenant-
Admiral. With this fleet he, in 1637 and 1638, took so
many ships from the Spaniards, that the States presented
him with a gold chain, and the King of France gave him
the Order of St. Michael. In April 1639 Tromp again set
sail, to cruise against the Spaniards off the coasts of France
and England; and on the 21st of October he attacked a large
Spanish and Portuguese fleet at the back of the Goodwins,
and defeated and dispersed it, taking thirteen richly-laden
galleons. Tromp, like Blake, was so beloved by his sea-
men, that both the captains and mariners used to call
him their father, and Tromp used to call them his children."
* Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, pp. Penn, vol. i. p. 407, and Appendix
157–159, London 1697; Granville E.
1652.] BLAKES RESEMBLANCE TO NELSON. 313
There appears, however, to have been a certain portion
of craft, amounting at times to an unscrupulous use of
falsehood, in the character of Tromp, which rendered him
more like Monk than Blake. For, by the concurring tes-
timony of all writers of all parties, Blake possessed in an
eminent degree the qualities that formed the great charm
of Nelson’s character—strong good sense, an affectionate
heart, a high and fearless spirit; a disposition not merely
averse to falsehood or artifice, but in the highest degree
frank, open, and truthful; a contempt of money, and a
passion for the glory and honour of his country. As it
has been said of Nelson, it may be said of Blake, that these
qualities formed no small part of his genius; they secured
to him the attachment and confidence of those he led, to
that degree which made actions possible that might have
been otherwise impossible. It may also be said of Blake,
as has been said of Nelson, that his understanding was
concentrated on that occupation which so late in life
became his profession; and that danger, as it always
excites when it does not disturb, by stimulating his mind
in the moment of action, roused his genius to the highest
exertions.
On Tuesday the 18th of May, 1652, while the Dutch Am-
bassadors were still in London, making long and tedious
harangues about the horrors and evils of war and the
blessings of peace—quoting, after their fashion, authorities
divine and human, from “ holy fathers of the Church,” who
“have said that men ought to have war in abomination,”
to “the most excellent wines, changed by corruption into
the sharpest vinegar, as experience shows us in natural
things,” and “ those sons of the earth, that destroyed one
another, as we are told in the story of Cadmus ”'—Blake,
* Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, pp. 29, 30.
314 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
with a squadron of fifteen ships, being in Rye Bay, received
intelligance from Major Bourne, who was stationed with
eight ships near Dover, that Tromp with forty sail was off
the South Sandhead." It should be mentioned that a few
days before, namely, on the 12th of May, Captain Young,
who was sailing to the westward, to take the command of
the west guard, fell in with a fleet of Hollanders from
Genoa and Leghorn, under the protection of a convoy of
three Dutch ships of war. One of the Dutch ships of war,
in answer to Captain Young’s request that he would strike
his flag, sent word that he would not. Upon this the
English and Dutch ships exchanged four or five broad-
sides; and the Dutch captain then took in his flag, and
sent word to Captain Young, that “he had orders from
the States not to strike, and that if he struck he would
lose his head.” “But at length,” adds Captain Young, “he
* Blake to the Council of State,
May 20, 1652.-I quote this letter of
Blake from the copy printed in Mr.
Granville Penn’s “Memorials of Ad-
miral Sir William Penn” (vol. i. pp.
421, 422). Mr. Granville Penn gives
several letters of Blake from the ori-
ginals, in Blake's handwriting, among
Sir W. Penn's Papers. And though
he does not specify this letter as
printed from Sir W. Penn's papers,
it may be inferred that it is so, since
it is neither to be found among the
MSS. in the State Paper Office, nor in
Thurloe's Collection of State Papers,
the principal part of which consists of a
series of papers discovered in thereign
of King William, in a false ceiling in
the garrets belonging to Secretary
Thurloe's chambers, No. 13, near
the chapel in Lincoln's Inn, by a
clergyman who had borrowed those
chambers during the long vacation of
his friend Mr. Thomlinson, the owner
of them. This clergyman soon after
disposed of the papers to Lord Somers,
then Lord Chancellor, who caused them
to be bound up in 67 folio volumes.
These afterwards descended to Sir
Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls;
upon whose decease they were pur-
chased by Mr. Fletcher Gyles, book-
seller, and published by Mr. Gyles's
executors. These papers had, no
doubt, been thus secreted by Thurloe
at the Restoration—a circumstance
which explains the absence from the
State Paper Office of most of the
papers containing the voluminous cor-
respondence referred to in the minutes
of the proceedings of the Council of
State. How these original letters of
Blake and others came to be among
the papers of Admiral Sir William
Penn is not explained,
1652] BLAKE AND TROMP IN DOVER RoAD. 315
did strike, which makes me conceive he had had enough
of it.” I
Blake was not a man to suffer any honour that had been
paid to the royal flag of England to be withheld from the
flag of the Commonwealth of England, as long as he was
alive and the Admiral of that Commonwealth. Immediately
on the receipt of this intelligence, he made all possible
speed to ply up towards the Dutch fleet, commanded by
Tromp; and in the morning of Wednesday the 19th of
May, 1652, he saw them at anchor in and near Dover Road.”
Thus in the same straits where, 64 years before, Lord
Howard and the Duke of Medina-Sidonia had brought
their dispute to an arbitrament, two men, albeit plebeians
and neither barons nor dukes, of haughtier name than
either Howard or Medina-Sidonia, the two great admirals
of the 17th century, first came in view of each other.
When Blake came within three leagues of the Dutch,
they weighed anchor, “ and stood away by a wind to the
eastward; we supposing,” says Blake, “their intention
was to leave us, to avoid the dispute of the flag. About
two hours after, they altered their course, and bore directly
with us, Van Tromp the headmost ; whereupon we lay by
and put ourselves into a fighting posture, judging they had
a resolution to engage.” Some accounts state that this
alteration of Tromp's course was caused by his falling in
with a ketch coming from Holland, and bringing important
orders.” But Blake makes no mention of this in his letter
to the Council of State.
There is so wide a discrepancy between the statements
* Captain Young to the Council of William Penn,” vol. i. pp. 419–421.
State, May 14, 1652.-This letter of * Blake to the Council of State, May
Captain Young is also quoted from 20, 1652.
the copy printed in Mr. Granville * Ibid. same date.
Penn’s “Memorials of Admiral Sir * Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 191.
316 CoMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
made by the two admirals, Blake and Tromp, that it is
impossible to reconcile them, each stating that the other
fired the first broadside. Englishmen esteem themselves,
I think justly, as standing high for veracity among na-
tions; and I think Blake may be considered as standing
high for veracity among Englishmen. I also know more
of Blake than I do of Tromp. Therefore, when these two
witnesses differ, I am inclined to strike the balance in
favour of Blake. In no part of history does the difficulty
of obtaining the exact truth press so painfully upon the
writer, who is conscientiously dealing with historical evi-
dence in the search of historical truth, as in the narra-
tives of battles. Did any two men ever fight either a
single combat, or a great pitched battle at the head of two
fleets or armies, and, when it was done, give the same ac-
count of it? If we find it difficult to get at the exact
truth in regard to battles fought within ten or fifteen
years, how greatly must the difficulty be increased when
we go back 200 years, to say nothing of 2,000 !
Besides some strong circumstantial evidence, tending to
prove that Tromp fired the first broadside,' there is an
admission in the Dutch “Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,”
which is greatly in favour, if not absolutely conclusive, of
the view that Tromp was the aggressor. It is stated, as a
reason for laying aside Tromp for a time, that his having
not been so fortunate in his last undertakings as was ex-
pected was “ looked upon as a judgment upon him, for being
the cause of that great war.”
I will now allow Blake to tell his story in his own clear,
plain, and simple language, as he told it in his letter to
* See particularly Dixon’s “Robert * Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
Blake,” pp. 192, 193:——new edition, p. 72,
pp. 158, 159.

1652.] FIRST FIGHT BETWEEN THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH. 317
the Council of State, dated “From aboard the James,
three leagues off the Hyde, the 20th of May, 1652.”
Tromp having, as stated, stood away, as if his intention
was to avoid, as Blake thought, the dispute of the flag;
and having two hours after altered his course, so as to bear
directly down upon Blake's fleet, and to come, as Blake
asserts, within musket-shot without striking his flag, the
legitimate conclusion was that Tromp did this in direct
bravado and defiance of the fleet of the English Common-
wealth; and, consequently, no other course was left for
Blake, in the strict execution of his duty, than that which
he pursued, as thus described by himself. It is important
to observe that the words “being come within musket-
shot ” mean that Tromp came within musket-shot ; for
Blake had said, just before, “We lay by, and put ourselves
into a fighting posture *:—
“Being come within musket-shot, I gave order to fire
at his flag, which was done thrice: after the third shot he
let fly a broadside at us. Major Bourne, with those ships
that came from the Downs, being eight," was then making
towards us. We continued fighting till night; then our
ship [his own ship, the James] being unable to sail, by
reason that all our rigging and sails were extremely shat-
tered, our mizenmast shot off, we came, with advice of the
captains, to an anchor about three or four leagues off the
Ness,” to refit our ship, at which we laboured all the night.
This morning we espied the Dutch fleet, about four leagues
distance from ours, towards the coast of France; and,
by advice of a council of war, it was resolved to ply to
windward to keep the weather-gage ; and we are now ready
Tromp, in his letter to the States with Blake was fifteen.—Life of
of the Netherlands, calls the number Cornelius Pan Tromp, p. 17.
of Bourne's ships twelve. He admits, * Dungeness.
however, that the number of ships
318 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
to let fall our anchor this tide. What course the Dutch fleet
steers we do not well know, nor can we tell what harm we
have done them; but we suppose one of them to be sunk,
and another of thirty guns we have taken, with the cap-
tains of both : the mainmast of the first being shot by the
board, and much water in the hold, made Captain Lawson’s
men to forsake her. We have six men of ours slain, and
nine or ten desperately wounded, and twenty-five more not
without danger; amongst them our master, and one of
his mates, and other officers. We have received about
seventy great shot in our' hull and masts, in our sails and
rigging without number, being engaged with the whole
body of the fleet for the space of four hours; being the
mark at which they aimed. We must needs acknowledge
it a great mercy that we had no more harm, and Our hope
is the righteous God will continue the same unto us, if
there do arise a war between us; they being the first in
the breach, and seeking an occasion to quarrel, and watch-
ing, as it seems, an advantage to brave us upon our coast.
“Your most humble servant,
“ROBERT BLAKE.”
It, may be mentioned, as a proof of the difficulty of ob-
taining accurate and thoroughly trustworthy accounts of
the numbers engaged on such occasions, that Algernon
Sydney, who was not only a cotemporary, but a member
* By “we” and “our" Blake means
his own ship, the James—the Admiral's
flag-ship on this occasion.
* Blake to the Council of State,
“from aboard the James, three leagues
off the Hyde, May 20, 1652.” “That
Mr. Thurloe do prepare an extract of
the several letters which have come to
the Council, giving an account of the
fight between the Dutch fleet and the
English fleet in the Downs, as also of
that made by Captain Young off Ply-
mouth; and bring the same to the Com-
mittee of Foreign Affairs to-morrow
morning, who are to sit for that pur-
pose.”—Order Book of the Council of
State, Monday, May 24, 1652, MS.
State Paper Office.
1652.] THE DUTCH WAR BEGUN. 319
of the Parliament at this very time, says—“When Van
Tromp set upon Blake in Folkestone Bay, the Parliament
had not above thirteen ships against threescore.” Where-
as the Parliament had fifteen ships with Blake, which, with
the eight brought up by Bourne, made twenty-three against
forty, the number of the Dutch, stated in Blake's letter to
the Council of State. Also, the English ships were gene-
rally larger than the Dutch, carrying more guns and more
But there is truth in the further remark of Sydney,
which only does justice to the obstinate valour of Blake
and his seamen, that the Parliament at this time “had not
a man that had ever seen any other fight at sea than
between a merchant-ship and a pirate, to oppose the best
captain in the world, attended with many others in valour
and experience not much inferior to him.” A nation that
could at once produce such an admiral as Blake out of an
Oxford student, and such a supply of naval fighting-men
out of her merchant-seamen, assuredly may laugh at the
menaces of the world in arms against her.
On Thursday the 20th of May, 1652, in the Council of
State, an order to make stay of all Dutch ships in all the
ports throughout England, Wales, and Scotland, was nega-
tived when put to the vote. But in the afternoon of the
following day, an order passed, “That the letters prepared
to be sent to the several ports, concerning the stay of what
IlléIl.
| Discourse concerning Government,
chap. ii. sect. 28.
* Algernon Sydney, ibid.—Algernon
Sydney's father, the Earl of Leicester,
has also stated the numbers inaccu-
rately in his Journal: “Wednesday,
May 19, 1652–There was a fight at
sea, betwixt Dover and Folkstone, be-
tween Van Tromp, Admiral of the
Hollanders' fleet, consisting of forty-
two men-of-war; and Robert Blake,
Admiral of the English fleet, consist-
ing then only of about 14 sail. This
was the first fight between the nations,
and lasted from 4 o'clock in the even-
ing till after 8, when the Dutch went
away with loss of two ships.”—Journal
of the Earl of Leicester, in Blencowe's
Sydney Papers, p. 135: London, 1825,
320 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. ſcar. XIV.
Dutch ships are in the several ports of this nation, be sent
away.”
On the 20th of May, the Council of State made the
following orders:–
“That the Commissioners of the Navy, some of the
Trinity House, and the officers of the Ordnance, be sent
unto to come to the Council to-morrow morning, at 7 of the
clock.”? -
“That Lieutenant-Colonel Kelsey be despatched down
to Dover Castle, and be authorised, if there be occasion,
to reinforce himself, and to entertain 200 or 300 soldiers,
over and above what he hath in garrison, for a month,
which the Council will pay; and he is to give frequent in-
telligence to the Council of what shall pass in the Downs,
between the fleet of the Commonwealth and the Hollanders;
and he is likewise to take care that the town of Sandwich
may be encouraged to stand up in their own defence,
against any attempts which shall be made upon them.”
“The Council of State being certified of a fight at sea,
Occasioned by a fleet of ships of war belonging to the
States of the United Provinces against the ships of this
Commonwealth, by which action, especially during the
time of the treaty begun and continued by the Lords
Ambassadors of the said States with the Parliament, when
the same could be least suspected or justified; the Council,
doubting that many people, being thereby highly incensed,
might make attempts of violence upon the said persons of
the Lords Ambassadors, or any belonging to them, have
thought fit, for the prevention thereof, to order that some
troops of horse be appointed to quarter near the house of
* Order Book of the Council of Paper Office.
State, Thursday, May 20, and Friday 2 Ibid. May 20, 1652.
afternoon, May 21, 1652, MS. State * Ibid. same day.
=
=
1652.] BLAKE THANKED BY PARLIAMENT AND COUNCIL. 321
the said Ambassadors, and to keep strict guard about the
same, for their Lordships’ preservation and secure residence
there.” And on the afternoon of the following day, the
Council ordered that four files of musketeers of the guards
about the town, and also twenty horse, be appointed, under
the command of some civil officer, to repair to Chelsea for
the guard of the Dutch Ambassadors.” But in appointing
this guard the Council had no intention of imposing any
restraint on the personal liberty of the Dutch Ambassadors,
as appears from the following minute :-
“That it be signified to Commissary-General Whalley
that, the instruction of the Council in appointing a guard
at the house of the Extraordinary Ambassadors of the
United Provinces being only for the safety of their persons
against injury and violence, that he manage the said
guard in such manner that it may appear to be honour-
able, and no restraint at all upon them or any of their
retinue; but that it be at their liberty, and the liberty of
their attendants and servants, and others amongst them,
to go and come as their occasion shall require, and leaving
it wholly to them, when they go abroad, whether they will
have any guard to attend them.”
In the afternoon of Friday the 21st of May, the Council
ordered :— -
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to take
notice to him of the receipt of his letter, and to inclose to
him the copy of the Order of Parliament, approving of
what he relates in his letter; to let him know the Council
will take all possible care for the supplying him with
* Order Book of the Council of Mémoires de Montcouculi, p. 30 : Paris,
State, May 20, 1652, MS. State Paper 1760.
Office. * Order Book of the Council of
* Ibid. Friday afternoon, May 21, State, Friday, May 28, 1652, MS. State
1652. “Six hommes font une file.”— Paper Office.
VOL. II. Y
322 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
victuals and ammunition, and for the hastening out of the
rest of the ships now in the river, which are to come to
him ; to return him the thanks of the Council for what he
hath done.” "
At the same sitting this order was made: “That the
Council do sit to-morrow morning at 8 of the clock, as also
On Monday morning, and the members of the Council be
sent unto to that purpose; and that the Council do sit also
on Lord’s Day in the afternoon, if there shall be occasion,
which is left to the judgment of the Lord-General.””
On the same day there was issued a great number of
warrants to the captains of the State’s ships, to make
speedy repair to the Downs, or wheresoever they shall be
informed General Blake is, and observe the orders he shall
give them. Messengers were also despatched to Harwich,
Yarmouth, and elsewhere, to carry orders to the State’s
ships there, and the merchant-ships in the State’s service,
to make all the speed they could to join General Blake's
fleet.
On Saturday the 22nd of May, the Council ordered,
“That the members of the Council be sent unto, to come
to the Council on Monday morning next, by 9 o'clock, in
order to give audience to the Dutch Ambassadors at the
Council.” 3
The Council of State met on the following day (Sunday,
the 23rd of May 1652), and made the following orders:–
“That a letter be written to the Commissioners of the
Navy, and the officers of the Ordnance, to desire them to
send to General Blake all the boatswains’ and gunners’
stores for which he hath written.” “
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. same time.
State, Friday, in the afternoon, May * Ibid. Saturday, May 22, 1652.
21, 1652, MS. State Paper Office * Ibid. Sunday, May 23, 1652.
1652.] EXERTIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 323
“That a messenger be despatched, to go down the River
of Thames, to take an account of the going out of the ships
which are ready, of which he is to have a list; and is to
give an account to the Council of what ships are gone, and
how far the rest are on the way.” "
“That the warrant yesterday signed by the Lord Presi-
dent, in the name of the Council, for the impresting of
men for the service of the fleet, be approved of as the
warrant of the Council.””
“That the Committee of the Admiralty do sit to-morrow
morning, at 7 of the clock, in the Council Chamber, and
confer with the victuallers of the navy, concerning the
making of further provisions of victual for the navy; and
also with such of the Commissioners of the Navy, and of the
Trinity House, as have subscribed the letter to the Council
concerning the furnishing out of more ships; to which
purpose a summons is to be given unto them, to come to
the Committee to-morrow morning.
On the following day (Monday), the Council evinced their
opinion of the conduct of the Dutch by the following
22 3
order :—
“That the Council doth declare, that it is the pleasure
of this Council, that none of the members thereof do
speak with the Heer Newport, lately come from Holland,
or hold any correspondence with him.” “
On the same day the Council ordered: “That it be
humbly represented to the Parliament, that the Council
1 Order Book of the Council of sadors concerning the negotiation, as
State, Sunday, May 23, 1652, MS. to tell them several things by word of
State Paper Office. mouth that were entrusted to him by
* Ibid. same day. the States, ran great danger of his
* Ibid. same day. life,” says the Dutch writer of the “Life
4 Ibid. Monday, May 24, 1652.- of Cornelius Van Tromp,” “because he
Nieuport, who had been sent over “as was taken for a spy.”—Life of Corne-
well to carry some papers to the ambas- litts Van Tromp, p. 32.
Y 2
324. COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
r
finds it necessary, upon consideration of the present state of
affairs, that forty sail of ships more should be taken on,
and have already given order to that purpose. That the
Parliament be humbly moved, thereupon, to take it into
consideration, where money may be had for the paying of
the said ships.” "
The following, also made the same day, is an instruc-
tive minute, as showing how easily the merchant-ships of
that time, being all armed and manned by seamen, who, as
being always ready to defend their ships against pirates,
were to a certain extent fighting seamen, could be con-
verted into ships of war:—
“That a letter be written to the Commissioners of the
Trinity House, to let them know that they are to give
directions to the ten ships bound for the Newfoundland
fishery, to fall down forthwith into the Downs, and there
to remain with the fleet till further orders; and to let them
know that if the State shall have occasion to make use of
them, they will take care that they shall receive reasonable
satisfaction and allowance for the time they shall be em-
ployed, and that they shall have Jacks provided for them.” ”
The business of completing the equipment of the mer-
chant-ships for ships of war, is further set forth in the
following “memorandum ” of 29th June, 1652:—“ Sir
Arthur Haselrig reports from the Committee for the
Ordnance, that all the merchants’ ships, which have been
taken on to be an addition to the fleet, are all of them fitted
with guns and gunners’ stores.” ”
On the 24th of May, the Council of State also issued an
order and commission to the Vice-Admiral of Essex, and
| Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. same day.
State, Monday, May 24, 1652, MS. * Ibid. Tuesday, June 29, 1652.
State Paper Office.
1652.] COMMISSIONS TO PRESS SEAMEN. 325
the like to the Vice-Admirals of Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent,
Sussex, and Hants, “to summon before them all the seamen
and mariners from fifteen to fifty years of age, and to ac-
quaint them with the State's emergency of service, and the
want of seamen, to man a fleet of ships now in preparation
in the River of Thames, for the seas; and withal to press
for that service so many able seamen as they can possibly
get, giving unto each man xiid. prest-money, and 1d. a.
mile conduct, from the place where they shall be so im–
pressed, to the place of their appearance at Deptford, in
Rent, within two miles of London, where they shall be en-
tered on board the respective ships, by the State’s Clerk of
the Cheque, &c.;” “ and you are to cause a note to be
written by the clerks, and delivered to each seaman, speci-
fying his name, age, stature, complexion, where prested,
when he shall appear before the Clerk of the Cheque afore-
said, which must be with all expedition.” "
On Wednesday the 26th of May, “A letter from the
Commissioners of the Navy was read, whereby they desire
directions as to the pressing of five ships already laden for
merchant voyages: ordered, that a letter be written to the
said Commissioners to proceed with the pressing the said five
ships, and to give orders for their speedy setting forth.””
“That a letter be written to the Commissioners of the
Navy, to let them know that the General of the Fleet hath
signified his desire to the Council to have a further number
of fireships provided for the fleet; and, therefore, that they
do look out for six ships fit for fireships, and provide all
materials requisite to the fitting of them out, and to certify
their proceedings to the Council.”
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Wednesday, May 26, 1652,
State, Monday, May 24, 1652, MS. * Ibid. same day. -
State Paper Office.
326 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
On Thursday the 27th of May, the Council ordered,
“That Mr. Bond be desired to acquaint the Parliament
with the Dover seamen’s voluntary aud cheerful going aboard
the fleet before the engagement; ” and “that a sum of money
be provided for repair of Dover Pier.””
On Saturday the 29th of May, the Council ordered,
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to enclose
unto him the letter from the Mayor of Weymouth, giving
notice of the coming by of sixty sail of Dutch ships toward
the Downs; to desire him to make stay of them, or any
other ships belonging to the Dutch, and send them into
port, or secure them otherwise as he shall think fit, without
embezzlement, or taking anything from them, provided it
be not to divert from prosecuting his former instructions.””
“That it be referred to the Committee of the Admiralty
to consider how the charge of keeping of the Dutch pri-
soners at Dover may be satisfied, and report their opinions
to the Council.”.”
On Monday the 31st of May, the Council ordered, “That
a warrant be issued to the victuallers of the fleet, to victual
the whole fleet, except Sir George Ayscue’s squadron, and
the ships that came lately home from the southward, under
the command of Captain Penn, till the 1st of October next.”
On Tuesday the 1st of June, the Council received a
letter from General Blake, concerning his want of men.
At this time the Council were in constant communication
with Blake. Several letters were written to him every or
almost every day, many of them concerning the disposal of
the numerous prizes taken by him from the Dutch. Thus,
on the 2nd of June, “That a letter be written to General
* Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Saturday, May 29, 1652.
State, Thursday, May 27, 1652, MS. * Ibid. same day.
State Paper Office. * Ibid. Monday, May 31, 1652.
1652.] GREAT LOSS OF SHIPS AND GOODS BY THE DUTCH. 327
Blake, to take notice of the receipt of his letter of the 1st
of June; to let him know he is to send the Dutch ships
taken by him into the River of Thames, and to send all the
common seamen, if they be not English, into Holland by
the first opportunity, and cause the captains and com-
manders of the said ships to be secured.”"
By the 14th of June, however, the Council had changed
their mind about the disposal of the Dutch common sea-
men: –“That a letter be written to General Blake, to take
notice of the receipt of his letter, and the enclosed list of
Dutch ships taken; to desire him to send such ships as are
already taken, and such as shall hereafter be taken, into
the River of Thames, and to give notice of the sending
of them to the Commissioners of the Customs, to whose
care the Council have committed the managing of that
business, both as to the securing of the ships, as also
goods, without embezzlement ; to let him know that, not-
withstanding the former Order of the Council, whereby he
was directed to send home the common seamen, he is now
to permit them to remain aboard their ships till further
order, provided the ships (notwithstanding their remain-
ing aboard) be secured; to desire him to give directions
to all officers of the Customs, when there shall be occasion
to put in any Dutch ships, to secure the ships and take
a strict account of the goods, and preserve them from em-
bezzlement, and to send them to London with the first
opportunity of a safe convoy, to be disposed of by the
Commissioners of the Customs.””
The effect of these proceedings on the part of the
English Commonwealth, carried out with a vigour and
1 Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Monday morning, June 14,
State, Wednesday, June 2, 1652, MS. 1652.
State Paper Office.
328 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
|
energy of which Europe had seen no example for ages,
was such as somewhat to disturb the schemes of the Dutch,
who, confident in the strength of their navy and the ability
of their admirals, had reckoned on an easy conquest of the
navy of the Commonwealth of England. Cotemporary
Dutch writers inform us that the Dutch merchants “were
almost out of their wits, by reason of the great loss they
daily sustained, both of their ships and goods, which
became a prey to the English privateers.” . It is probable
that the Dutch were about as sincere in their professions
of treating about peace, as Philip II. and Alexander
Farnese had been, sixty-four years before, while they were
preparing the Spanish Armada. It is probable that the
Dutch Government of 1652 were as much determined on
the destruction of the English Commonwealth of 1652,
as Philip II. was determined on the destruction of the
English Monarchy of 1588. But the Dutch of 1652 were
destined to discover, somewhat late, that the English
Government of 1652 was a far more able and energetic
Government than the English Government of 1588; that
Blake was an enemy far more formidable than Drake; and
that the English navy of 1652 was a navy able to contest the
dominion of the seas with them, the greatest naval Power
that, down to that time, had ever appeared in the world.
If, before the fight that has been described between
Blake and Tromp, the English Parliament and Council of
State gave a cold reception to the pacific professions of the
Dutch Ambassadors, still more coldly and unfavourably
* Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, ceived August 29, are estimated as
p. 37-Of the losses of the Dutch being “most richly laden (one of
merchants, some idea may be formed them of 30 guns), worth above
from the fact that six Dutch “Straits- £200,000.”—Granville Penn, vol. i.
men,” taken by Captain Penn, as no- p. 438.
tified to the Council in his letters, re-
1652.) THE PARLIAMENT AND THE DUTCH AMBASSADORs. 329
did they receive the further professions of those ambassa-
dors, made after that event. The temper of mind of the
Council of State is shown by the following order, made
by them on Friday the 4th of June :-
“That a Committee be appointed, to prepare an answer
as to the Dutch papers, in pursuance of the Order of
Parliament of the 4th of June instant, as well upon the
grounds expressed in a paper now read, as the grounds
now debated in the Council; and that, by way of aggrava-
tion, mention be made in the said answer, that the late
act of hostility committed by the Dutch fleet upon the
English was during the treaty; and that Sir Henry Vane,
Lord-President, Lord-Commissioner Lisle, the Lord-
General, Lord Bradshaw, Mr. Scott, &c., or any three of
them, be a Committee for the purpose.”
The answer referred to above, as well as the answer
made a week or two later to Adrian Pauw, Pensionary of
Holland, sent as another ambassador-extraordinary, par-
ticularly insisted upon the point indicated in the above
minute of the Council of State : that the Dutch had made,
during the negotiation of a treaty, an unexpected attempt
upon the English fleet—an attempt “by swrprise,” which,
under the circumstances, amounted to treachery and false-
hood, to “destroy our fleet, which is our barrier and our
securest rampart, and by that means to ea:pose this Common-
wealth to an invasion.”” The answer further set forth,
“that if the attempts made by the Holland fleet, as much
by surprise as it was, had succeeded according to their
hopes, the Commonwealth of England would have been
itself plunged into the greatest disasters imaginable, and
* Order Book of the Council of * Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
State, Friday, June 4, 1652, MS. State p. 37.
Paper Office.
©
330 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
that, therefore, it was not reasonable, after they had been
so miraculously preserved, that they should expose them-
selves again to the like disgraces for the future. That
they could not suffer themselves to be any longer amused
wnder the specious pretence of an ea amen, or by eacamples not
pertinent to their case, of what other States may have done;
but that rather they were resolved to employ those means
which necessity and the nature of the fact require to be
used; that, besides, they could not consent to the con-
clusion of a treaty of alliance, till they had received
satisfaction about the point in question.” "
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of England, as
they style themselves, in these answers to the Dutch
Ambassadors, also declare that, “ after a mature delibera-
tion, and examination of the writings which their Excel-
lencies the Ambassadors of the United Provinces have put
into their hands, although the Parliament were inclined
to receive favourably the expressions contained in the
aforesaid writings, tending to represent the late fight
between the two fleets as a thing that happened without
the knowledge and against the will of their High Mighti-
nesses; yet upon due reflection made thereon, it appears
that the resolutions of the States and the conduct of their
admirals do noways agree with all those protestations,
especially at a time whilst a treaty of alliance was
managing, which they themselves had sought for, and
which had been negotiated by their own ambassadors.
Besides, what could be the scope of so formidable an
arming of 150 ships of war, made by them without any
occasion for it, but to wrest from England by force of
arms her ancient prerogatives, and the rights she has
over the seas; and that, further, they aim at nothing else
Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, pp. 49, 50.
1652. ANOTHER AMBASS.ADOR FROM HOLLAND. 331
but the destruction of our fleet, which is our barrier and
our securest rampart, and by these means to expose this
Commonwealth to an invasion, as they intended to do by
the late attempt. Upon which the Parliament think
themselves indispensably engaged, with the assistance of
Heaven, to exact speedy satisfaction for the outrages done
to the nation, and to put themselves in such a condition
that the like may happen no more for the future.”"
The words “after they had been so miraculously pre-
served,” are to be particularly noted, in connection with a
remark before made in this history, with reference to the
conduct of the Government of Queen Elizabeth in its
preparations to meet the Spanish Armada, that the Govern-
ment which has to trust to miracles for its preservation
must be a bad Government. Tt is indeed true, that
Tromp's sudden attack upon Blake, with a force the over-
whelming superiority of which, commanded by a veteran
admiral the most renowned at that time in the world,
might well have led to the conclusion, that nothing short
of a miracle could have saved the English fleet from
destruction and, by consequence, England from invasion,
not merely by the Dutch, but by half the despots of
Europe—partly for the purpose of the plunder of London
and the other wealthy towns, and partly for that of
bringing back the Stuarts, with all their oppressions
and vices. But the Commonwealth statesmen were not
men to trust to the working of miracles for the preserva-
tion of their country. They had placed in command of
their fleet a man whom they had already often tried and
never found wanting. The miracle which at that time
saved England from such a fate, was the fertile and rapid
genius and the indomitable courage of Blake.
Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, pp. 36, 37.
332 commonwealTH OF ENGLAND. [Clar. xiv.
By a list sent by Blake to the Council of State, it
appears that the number of the fleet now with him in the
Downs amounted to fifty-five ships or thereabouts.
On Tuesday the 8th of June, the Council ordered,
“That the Here of Hempstead [Pauw), having signified
to the Council that he is arrived at Gravesend, being sent
from the Lords the States-General of the United Pro-
vinces in the quality of an Extraordinary Ambassador to
the Parliament of the Commonwealth; that the letter of
the said Here Hempstead be humbly represented to the
Parliament for their direction to his reception, and that
my Lord President [Sir Henry Vane was President during
that month] do represent the same.”" .
“That all ships belonging to this nation that trade to
the Baltic Sea, and are homewards bound, do come to a
rendezvous at Elsinore Castle, and not set sail out of the
Sound until such time as a convoy from General Blake
shall be there ready to receive them ; with which they
are to sail to their designed port.””
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to acquaint
him with the increase of the enemy’s fleet; to desire him
to lose no opportunity to put his instructions in execution;
and to enclose to him the Order of Parliament, whereby
the Extraordinary Ambassador from the United Provinces
is referred to the Council, and notwithstanding to desire
him to pursue his instructions.””
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to desire
him to dismiss the ships which are now in the Downs
bound for Newfoundland; and to let him know that they
are to go together in company, for their better security.” "
| Order Book of the Council of State, 1652.
Tuesday, June 8, 1652, MS. State * Ibid. same time.
Paper Office. * Ibid. Tuesday, June 15, 1652.
* Ibid. Monday afternoon, June 14,
1652.] CONTINUED PREPARATIONS FOR WAR. 333
“That a letter be written to Sir George Ayscue, to
hasten him with the ships with him into the Downs.” "
“That the Council do approve of what hath been done
by General Blake, in the fitting out to sea of the three
T)utch men-of-war.””
“That a letter be written to the Commissioners of the
Navy, to certify unto them what hath been done by General
Blake in the ordering the setting forth of three Dutch
men-of-war; to let them know the Council do approve
thereof; to desire them to hold correspondence with
General Blake, concerning the fitting out of the said ships;
and to take care that they may be furnished with men
and victuals, which are to be supplied from hence and not
from the fleet, as also with all other things necessary for
them.” 3
“That a letter be written to the Committee 4 of the Navy,
to let them know that the Council finds it necessary for
the service of the public that, besides the five ketches
already taken up, that five more should be taken on ; to
desire them, therefore, to order that they may be paid
according to contract.” "
“That a warrant be issued to the officers of the
Ordnance, to provide and send down to the fleet a good
proportion of hammered iron shot, which may be pro-
portionable to the fleet now in the Downs, to be distributed
amongst them by order of the General of the fleet.” "
On Friday the 25th of June, the Council of State
ordered, “That it be referred to the Committee for Law
* Order Book of the Council of State, Navy and the Commissioners of the
Tuesday, June 15, 1652, MS. State Navy, see Vol. I. p. 49, note 1.
Paper Office. * Order Book of the Council of State,
* Ibid. Thursday, June 17, 1652. Thursday, June 17, 1652, MS. State
* Ibid. same day. Paper Office.
* For an explanation of the dis- * Ibid. same day.
tinction between the Committee of the
334 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
and Examinations to prepare a Declaration, in pursuance
of the Order of Parliament, referring it to the Council to
prepare a Declaration for asserting the right of this nation
to the sovereignty of the sea and the fishery, and to bring
it into the Council with all convenient speed; and the
Lord Bradshaw is desired to take care of this business.”
“That the Commissioners for treating with the Lord
Pauw, do desire his Excellency to give a speedy and
positive answer to the propositions of the Parliament, to
be delivered unto him by the said Commissioners, at a
conference to be held at 6 of the clock this night.”
On the following day the Council ordered, “That Mr.
Frost do pay for the printing of a book printed in justifi-
cation of the engagement [with the Dutch fleet] out of
the incident moneys belonging to this Council.” "
“That it be referred to the Committee for Foreign
Affairs, to take order for the printing of the book called
MARE CLAUSUM ; and that Mr. Du Guard be commanded
to print the same.” “
The Council of State met on the following day, Sunday,
the 27th of June, and ordered: “That, the Lord Pauw
having, by a paper this day delivered into the Council,
desired audience this afternoon, the Commissioners ap-
pointed to treat with his Lordship do give him a meeting
at the house of the said Lord Ambassador, to hear what he
hath to offer, and make report thereof to the Council.” "
The following minute shows the watchful care of the
Council of State over all the public interests, and it also
shows the extensive commerce carried on at that time by
England with all parts of the world:—“That a letter be
written to the Mayor of Plymouth, to let him know that
* Order Book of the Council of State, * Ibid. Saturday, June 26, 1652.
Friday, June 25, 1652, MS. State * Ibid. same day.
Paper Office. . * Ibid. Sunday, June 27, 1652.
* Ibid. same day. - *
1652.] THE DUTCH AM BASSAT) ORS DEPART. 335
the Council is informed that the East India ships, the
Barbadoes fleet, and several other ships from Turkey, the
Streights [the Straits of Gibraltar], and Spanish coasts,
and also some Guinea ships, are expected into the Channel
daily; which, being ignorant of the present affairs in
reference to the Dutch, may be in danger of being sur-
prised by them, ten Dutch men-of-war being, as the
Council is informed, upon those coasts; and, therefore,
desire him to give order to the two small vessels that were
formerly sent out, to ply up and down off the Land's End,
to give notice to any English ships that they meet, to go
into the next convenient port, and there to stay until con-
voys can be appointed for them.” " -
On the same day an order was made, that “ by reason of
the troubles between this Commonwealth and the Dutch,
Danish ships be saved harmless from the penalty of the
Navigation Act, in order to import into England Riga hemp
from Riga.””
On the following day the Council ordered : “That the
business of letters of marque and reprisal against the
French and Dutch be taken into consideration on Friday
next, in the afternoon; and the members of the Council
who are in town are to be sent unto, to come to the Council
at that time.” ” *
“That it be referred to the Committee who were for-
merly appointed to consider of the manner of the en-
tertainment to be given to the Dutch Ambassadors at
their coming, to consider of what civilities are fit to be
shown to them at their departure.” “
“That orders, passes, and safe-conducts, in pursuance of
the Order of Parliament in that behalf, be given to the Lord
1 Order Book of the Council of State, * Ibid. same day.
Monday, June 28, 1652, MS. State * Ibid. Tuesday, June 29, 1652,
Paper Office. * Ibid. same day.
336 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGIAND. [CHAP. XIV.
Pauw and the three Extraordinary Ambassadors, for their
safe passage into the Low Countries.” "
I have, in a note in a former page of this chapter, quoted
a statement from a Dutch writer, that when Nieuport
arrived in London from Holland, with papers and verbal
messages for the Dutch Ambassadors, he ran great danger
of his life, because he was taken for a spy. How far those
who took him for a spy, and more, how far those who took
all the Dutch Ambassadors for spies, were right in so doing,
maybe partly determined by the following statement, made
not by an English but by a Dutch writer:—“On the 11th
of July,” that is to say, four days after the English fleet
set sail for the North Sea, to go and destroy the Dutch
fleet of herring busses, and to watch for their ships coming
from the Indies, the Dutch Ambassadors departed from
London, and on the 13th met with Admiral Tromp, to
whom Mr. de Heemsted [Pauw) gave a memorial con-
taining an account of the forces of England. He like-
wise informed Tromp that Admiral Ayscew was then in
the Downs, with a squadron of twenty-one men-of-war,
where he might be easily attacked and beaten.” Upon this
information, Tromp resolved to go and attack Ayscue, with
a force more than treble that of Ayscue. But there hap-
pening a calm, and after that a contrary wind, it was im-
possible for him to execute this design. He therefore
directed his course northward in search of Blake, with a
fleet of seventy-nine ships of war, consisting of a squadron
of twenty-one ships, forming the van under Vice-Admiral
Evertsz, of the main body of thirty ships under his own
Order Book of the Council of State last given, and dated June 29,
State, Tuesday, June 29, 1652, MS. was the “Old Style.”
State Paper Office. - * Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
* The Dutch writer uses the “New p. 60.
Style; ” the minute of the Council of
1652.] BLAKE'S NORTHERN EXPEDITION. 337
immediate command, and of twenty-eight ships, forming
the rear under Rear-Admiral Florisz."
By this time Blake, who some days before, with a fleet
of sixty sail, had left the Downs, was sailing northward,
with a view of intercepting the great Dutch herring-fleet.
The anxiety of the Council of State to keep up, as far as
possible, an uninterrupted communication with their great
Admiral, is strikingly evinced by such minutes as the fol-
lowing, bearing date Wednesday, the 30th of June
(O.S.):-
“That a letter be written to the Mayor of Newcastle, as
also to the Bailiffs of Yarmouth, to desire them that, in
case none of the State's ships shall be found there upon
the receipt of the Council's letters, that they will then
cause a ketch to be hired to carry the messenger of the Council
to the fleet.” -
Whitelock's Journal marks the progress of Blake's ad-
vance northward:
“July 3.—Letters, that General Blake, with a gallant
fleet, went northwards, and left Sir George Ascue to com-
mand the rest of the fleet in the Downs, who took five
Dutch merchantmen, and General Blake took two men-of-
war and two merchantmen :-500 soldiers sent on board
Sir George Ascue.
“July 9.-Letters, that General Blake, with a fleet of
sixty sail, passed in sight of Dunbar towards the north, to
attend the Holland busses, and sent for the frigates and
Parliament’s vessels in those parts, who went to him.” “
“July 12.—Letters from Yarmouth, that the Hol-
55 3
* Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, State Paper Office. -
p. 61. * Whitelock's Memorials, July 3,
* Order Book of the Council of 1652: London, folio, 1732.
State, Wednesday, June 30, 1652, MS. * Ibid. July 9, 1652.
VOL. II. Z
338 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
landers have 180 busses at sea, and sixty men-of-war for
their guard; that General Blake was near them. That
Van Tromp was seen in the Downs, with about one hundred
sail of ships, nearer to Sir George Ascue.”
“July 17.—Letters, that the fleet could get no farther
than Aberdeen by reason of the contrary winds. That
General Blake had taken three or four of the Dutch busses
and one man-of-war, and sent them up.””
“July 24.—Letters, that General Blake took one hundred
of the Holland busses, and in them 1,500 men; the rest
secured themselves in Bressie's Bay [sic] in Scotland.””
“July 27.—That the Holland fleet were still off about
Newcastle, about 105 ships. ' That the Dutch took several
English vessels, and made their men serve under them.”
“July 31.-That no intelligence could come from
General Blake, being so far to the northward, and the
Dutch fleet between him and home.” " -
On Sunday, the 11th of July, the Council of State
ordered :- -
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to give him
notice of the appearance of the Dutch fleet, being 102 men-
of-war and 10 fireships, and are every day in sight of the
* Whitelock's Memorials, July 12,
1652. .
* Ibid. July 17, 1652.
* Ibid. July 24, 1652.-On the toll of
every tenth herring being paid, Blake
sent the vessels with the men back to
Holland, under acharge of fishing there
no more without English leave.—Gran-
ville Penn, vol. i. p. 434, note. “This
action,” says Ludlow, “was blamed by
some, who thought by the help of
those ships we might have been en-
abled to erect a fishery, and thereby
have made some reparation to the
English nation for the damages which
they had sustained from the Dutch;
and that by detaining their mariners
we might have weakened and destroyed
them considerably, they wanting men
for the management of their ship-
ping.”—Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i.
p. 420. But, as Mr. Dixon observes,
“The only fault ever advanced by
friend or foe against Blake, was an
excess of generosity towards his van-
quished enemies.”—Diaon's Robert
Blake, p. 204.
* Whitelock's Memorials, July 27,
1652.
* Ibid. July 31, 1652.

1652.] BLAKE AND TROMP. 339
fleet of Sir George Ayscue; that they are divided into
three squadrons; that Sir G. Ayscue intends to put his
fleet, being fourteen or sixteen sail, under the protection of
the Castle [Dover]; that the ships under Captain Harrison
are in Lee Road, stayed for the completing of their men,
that they may the better make their conjunction with Sir
G. Ayscue.” "
We have seen in the preceding volume” that the summer
of 1650, in which the Battle of Dunbar was fought, was a
rainy summer in Scotland. It would appear that the
summer of 1652 was a hot summer in Scotland, and also in
the Orkney and Shetland Islands and the surrounding seas.
Those who have experienced, when grouse-shooting in
the North of Scotland, the great heat about the middle
of August, in the mountain hollows—heat which I have
heard men say they thought as intense as they had ever
felt in India—and have also seen the tops of the same
mountains covered with snow about the end of August,
will readily recognise the truth of the following passage of
Whitelock, under date July 23, 1652:-" Of the difficulties
passed by the English forces in the Highlands, the ex-
tremities there both of heat and cold at this time, scorch-
ing of the sun, and yet snow upon the mountains to cool
them; that the inhabitants faced them continually ; that
venison is plenty there, though mutton be dear; and the
springs better than sack at Leith.” The great heat in the
North of Scotland in those months of July and August
1652, may partly account for the description given by
Order Book of the Council of Whitelock adds, “That the horsemen
State, Sunday, July 11, 1652, MS. State are apt to ride over the tops of their
Paper Office. houses; that the army had 400 baggage
* Vol. I. pp. 346 and 356. horses, led by the countrymen, loaden
* Whitelock's Memorials, p. 539, with bread and cheese, that they guard-
July 23, 1652.-Under the same date, ed their horses from the corn.”—Ibid.
Z 2
340 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
cotemporary writers of a tempest which, when the fleets of
Blake and Tromp were about to engage on the evening of
the 5th of August, about halfway between the Orkney and
the Shetland Islands, gathered, and burst with the sudden-
ness and fury of a tropical tornado. The wind, the rain,
and the darkness rendered all manoeuvring, almost all
communication by signal between the ships, impossible.
Tromp, as has been related, directed his course north-
ward with a fleet of about eighty sail, according to the
Dutch accounts, of about one hundred sail, according to
the English accounts. There was now, in addition to the
bitter enmity between the two nations, a feeling of strong
personal hostility raised between Tromp and Blake. It was
not merely mortifying but exasperating to Tromp, to see
the laurels of a life of successful naval warfare torn from
his brow by a man who but two or three years before had
never set foot on a ship's deck as a commander, or even
as a seaman. Blake, on the other side, was exasperated
at what he considered dishonourable conduct on the part
of Tromp, in attempting to destroy his fleet by a sudden
surprise, while a treaty was pending between the two na-
tions, and Dutch ambassadors were in London. It is
stated in the “Life of Cornelius Van Tromp” that, after the
fight near Dover, Tromp wrote a letter to Blake, in which
he entreated Blake to release the two Dutch captains he
had made prisoners, and also to Order the restitution of the
Dutch ship taken in that fight. Blake—not only surprised,
but indignant, that Tromp should presume to write to him,
upon such a subject, after what had passed—made him,
according to the same authority, the following answer:
“Sir, Nothing ever surprised me more than yours of the
2nd of June last, in that, though you affect with so much
Vanity to pass for a man of honour, yet ’tis no way visible
1652.] AMONG THE SHETLAND ISLES. 341
that you maintain that character by any of your actions.
The cruel attempt you lately made against the Parliament
of England’s fleet, whose ruin you had conspired, is an
evident proof of this . . . . That act of hostility you
have so lately committed is so much the more criminal, .
since you were pleased to do it in a time when your am-
bassadors were flattering our Commonwealth with new
hopes of peace and union, and pretended to solicit with
much earnestness a speedy conclusion of a treaty of mutual
alliance and confederation. That is the brave exploit
upon which at present you found your glory, and for which
you frame an unjust apology, as pretending you did nothing
else but defend yourself. But God, in whom we put our
greatest hopes, having made your designs serve to your
own destruction, we have taken some of your ships, which
you now are pleased to redemand with as much confidence
as if the action lately committed had been no act of hos-
tility, as it appears in your writings, by your affecting to
give it another name. In fine, I thought not fit to give
you any other answer but this, that I am persuaded you
will find the Parliament of England very ill-satisfied with
your conduct; because they cannot but regard with horror
the innocent blood of their subjects that has been spilt;
and, on the other side, that after all you will find yourself
constrained always to give them the marks of an entire
submission.” "
I see no reason to doubt the authenticity of this letter;
and, whether authentic or not, it may be taken as a fair
exponent of the state of feeling existing at that time
between Blake and Tromp, who looked upon each other
pretty much with the feelings of two bulldogs who had
a quarrel of some standing to fight out.
* Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, pp. 25, 26.
342 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
Towards evening, on the 5th of August (N. S.), the
Dutch and English fleets came in sight of each other
between Foula and Fair-Isle, the two most detached
of the Shetland group of islands. Foula is computed
to be twenty miles to the west of the largest of the Shet-
land Isles, called Mainland of Shetland, and Fair-Isle
to be twenty-five miles south-south-west of the nearest
headland of the Mainland. Foula is distinguished from
the other islands called the Shetland Isles—the general
appearance of which, as seen from the sea, is an unvarying
line of abrupt coast—by a cluster of five lofty hills, termi-
nating in pointed cones, the highest of which rises to the
height of nearly 1,400 feet.
The two hostile admirals were eagerly preparing for
immediate action, when, as the sun declined, dark masses
of clouds began gradually to spread themselves over the
sky, the sea grew black, distant thunder was heard, and
that ominous sound, well known to mariners (which the
English word sob does not so well express as the Scotch
word sough) of an approaching tempest, became distinctly
audible. As the sun disappeared, and the twilight deepened,
the sky assumed an aspect of pitchy darkness, very unusual
at that season of the year in that latitude, where the sun
sinks so little below the horizon that a certain degree of
light continues throughout the night. Every appearance
betokened the near approach of a violent tempest. At
length it burst. For the wind, which had long been
shifting about, turned at last suddenly to the north-
north-west, and blew with such fury that, says the writer
of the “Life of Cornelius Van Tromp.”—who gives so
minute a description of this terrible tempest, that it seems
probable he was either on board the Dutch fleet at that
time, or received his information direct from some of those
1652.] SEPARATED BY A TEMPEST. 343
who were-“our sails were all rent and torn in pieces, and
the waves rolled through them, and so went and spent
themselves against the rocks of Hitland [Shetland?],
throwing their foam up to the very heaven. Thus the
fleet, being, as it were, buried by the violence of the
sea in most horrible abysses, rose out of them only to
be tossed up to the very clouds. Here the masts were
beaten down into the sea, there the deck was overflown by
the prevailing waves; here the tempest was so much mis-
tress of the ships that they could be no longer governed,
and, on another side, appeared all the doleful forerunners
of a dismal wreck. And the darkness increasing the
danger, and the confused cries of the mariners redoubling
the common fear, both together made the saddest and
most frightful spectacle that was ever seen.” "
The storm lasted all night with unabated violence.
When the day broke, the effects of the tempest appeared.
The Dutch fleet had suffered considerably, some ships
being lost and many disabled. But of sixty of Tromp's
ships that were missing, forty-two were ascertained to be
safe among the Shetland Isles, and also two East India
ships supposed to be lost. Blake had suffered less than
Tromp. He had been able to keep his fleet together.
Tromp discovered him after the storm in the latitude of
Scotland, with sixty-two great ships much less damaged
than his own; the tempest having driven him to the
northward of Shetland, on which side he found more
shelter.”
On the 10th of August, letters reached the Council of
State that General Blake was off at sea near Scarborough;
and that forty Dutch ships were near Rye, in Sussex.
| Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, p. 62. * Ibid. p. 63,
344 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
There is some confusion in the accounts we have of the
relative movements of Tromp and Blake after the storm
above described. The writer of the “Life of Cornelius Van
Tromp ’’ says that, after the storm, when Tromp, with a
fleet of thirty-nine sail, discovered Blake with sixty-two
great ships, he offered Blake battle, which the latter
declined. This story is not credible to me, though it may
be credible to Dutchmen.
On the 14th of August, the Council of State received
intelligence from General Blake, that he was safely arrived
with his fleet from the northward.' And on the 15th of
August Whitelock reports, “Letters to the Council of
State of General Blake’s standing off to the coast of
Holland to look after the Dutch fleet, who were gone off
from the coast of Sussex.” ”
Soon after, Blake returned
to the English coast with his prizes, and 900 prisoners.”
* Whitelock's Memorials, p. 541.—
“That a letter be written to Gene-
ral Blake, to let him know what in-
telligence the Council have received
this day concerning the motion of the
I}utch fleet westward; and that he
make all possible speed with the fleet
into the Channel to find out the Dutch
fleet.” “That a letter be written to
the Mayor of Ipswich, to send away
two nimble ketches with two de-
spatches to General Blake.”— Order
Book of the Council of State, Sunday,
August 15, 1652, MS. State Paper
Office.
* Whitelock's Memorials, p. 541.
* Hobbes's Behemoth, p. 293; Lon-
don, 1682.-‘‘That a letter be written
to the Commissioners of the Navy, to
view the five prizes lately sent in
by General Blake, and give an account
to the Council how soon they may be
fitted out as men-of-war, and at what
charge.”—Order Book of the Council
of State, Monday morning, August 30,
1652, MS. State Paper Office. The
following minute, made in the after-
noon of the same day, shows the vigi-
lance of the Council of State: “That
a letter be written to the Commis-
sioners of the Navy to desire them to
give a speedy account to the Council
why the ships Swiftsure and the new
frigate at Woolwich are in no better
forwardness.”—Ibid. Monday after-
noon, August 30, 1652. About the
same time the number of minutes re-
specting private men-of-war shows
that the number of those privateers
must have been very great. Thus, on
August 26 and 27, 1652, orders were
made by the Council, “That warrants
be issued to the Judges of the Ad-
miralty to give letters for private
men-of-war to Captain Isaac Phillips,
commander of the ship Assistant; to

1662.j DE WITT SUBSTITUTED FOR TROMP. 345
On the 6th of September Whitelock has this entry:
“That Wan Tromp desired to be excused from going to
sea, and that De Witt was appointed by the State to
command-in-chief their navy; that they had not half men.
enough to man their fleet.”" The De Witt here mentioned
was a Vice-Admiral, Cornelius De Witt, but not, as some
writers appear to suppose, Cornelius, the elder of the two
celebrated brothers, Cornelius and John De Witt. That
Cornelius De Witt, the brother of John De Witt, is said,
indeed, to have served several years in the fleet of the
United Provinces in his early youth. But his later career
was altogether that of a civilian. In 1650 he was elected
burgomaster of Dordrecht, his native town, and deputy to
the States of Holland and West Friesland; and during
his brother John De Witt's administration, he held the
office of Inspector of Dykes in the district of Putten. The
De Witt here mentioned as appointed to command-in-
chief in the place of Martin Tromp is probably the same
person who, under the name of Cornelius Van Witt, acted
as Vice-Admiral under Tromp in the engagement with the
combined fleets of Spain and Portugal in 1639. As
Cornelius, the brother of John De Witt, was born in 1623,
it is impossible that he should have commanded as Vice-
Admiral in the action of 1639; and as he was but 29
years of age in 1652, it is, if not impossible, to the last
degree improbable that he should have been appointed
commander-in-chief of the
Lieutenant-Colonel Hazard, to W. Dale,
to Colonel Tizon, to Lieutenant-
Colonel Yeomans, to John and Ed-
ward Mole, merchants.”—Ibid. August
26 and 27, 1652. The Council of State
committed a serious error in granting
so many of these letters to private
men-of-war. We shall see that Blake,
Dutch fleet in 1652. The
in his letter to the Council of State
after the fight with the Dutch fleet, on
November 30, 1652, attributes the
want of seamen to “the great number
of private men-of-war, especially out
of the River Thames.”
* Whitelock's Memorials, p. 543.
346 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
commander-in-chief was clearly another Cornelius Van
Witt, or Cornelius De Witt, and most probably the same
person who acted as Vice-Admiral under Tromp in 1639.
The reasons that moved the States to appoint Vice-Admiral
De Witt admiral instead of Martin Tromp are stated to
have been their hopes that De Witt would perhaps have
better luck than Tromp had in his last expedition, and
the murmurs of the people, who began to look upon
Tromp's late ill-success as a judgment upon him for
being the cause of that great war; the last circumstance
amounting, as I have before observed, to an admission
that Tromp was the aggressor in the first fight near
Dover. -
But besides this De Witt, the States of Holland ap-
pointed to the command of a fleet a man of far greater
naval name. This was the celebrated Michael Ruyter,
afterwards De Ruyter; for in 1659, as a reward for defeat-
ing the Swedish fleet, he received from the King of Den-
mark a title of nobility, with a pension. Michael Ruyter
was born at Fleissingen in 1607, went to sea at eleven
years as a cabin-boy, and rose successively, through the
various grades of service, to the rank of admiral.” It is
said that Ruyter had resolved to pass the rest of his days
in peace and repose, and was prevailed on with some
difficulty to accept the command offered to him.”
In the course of the month of August there was fought
a battle between . Ruyter and Sir George Ayscue near
Plymouth, wherein, according to the English accounts, Sir
George Ayscue had the better; but amid the conflicting
1 Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, life (Amsterdam, 1690), which was
p. 72. translated into French (Amsterdam,
* The Dutch raised a splendid 1698).
monument to De Ruyter at Amster- * Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
dam ; and Gerard Brandt wrote his p. 64.
1652.] BLAKE DEFEATS A FRENCH FLEET. 34.7
authorities it is difficult, if not impossible, to state either
the exact numbers engaged on each side, or the exact
result. “Whatsoever was the matter,” says Hobbes, “the
Rump, though they rewarded Sir George Ayscue, never
more employed him in their service at sea.”
There are various minutes in the Order Book of the
Council of State about this time, indicating that the Prince
of Condé” wished to obtain some assistance from the
English Parliament in the contest in which he was then
engaged with Cardinal Mazarin, who at that time, when
Louis XIV. was about fourteen years of age, governed
France. Dunkirk was besieged by the Spanish forces
under the Archduke Leopold. As France then leaned
to the Dutch, the Parliament of England considered it
better that Dunkirk should fall into the hands of Spain,
While
cruising in the Channel in the beginning of September,
Blake fell in with a French fleet under the Duke of
Vendôme, who had just defeated the Spanish Admiral,
Count D’Oignon. This French fleet was about to relieve
and Blake had received instructions accordingly.
* Hobbes's Behemoth, p. 293.−
“That a letter be written to General
Blake, to let him know that the en-
gagement of Sir George Ayscue's fleet
with the Dutch is over for the present;
to desire him that he will, out of the
fleet now with him, despatch to Sir
George Ayscue six or eight good fri-
gates, whereby he may be enabled by
himself to rencounter that fleet, in
case he can find it out ; to let him
know that Tromp's [sic] fleet is in
preparation to come forth again ; to
desire him, therefore, to come back
again towards the coast of Holland to
attend his coming out, and to let him
know that the Sovereign and the rest
of the ships which are to come out of
the River of Thames are to join with
his fleet.”—Order Book of the Council
of State, Sunday morning, August 22,
1652, MS. State Paper Office. The
Council of State held three meetings
on this Sunday, August 22, 1652. The
first is headed “Sunday, morning;” the
second, “Sunday, 1 o'clock, afternoon;”
the third, “Sunday afternoon, at 4 of
the clock.”
* Iletters from the Prince of Condé,
referred to in a minute of April 1,
1652, and other subsequent minutes.—
Order Book of the Council of State,
MS. State Paper Office.
348 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
Dunkirk, by throwing into that piratical town men, arms,
stores, and fresh provisions. Blake, in the Resolution,
followed by about twenty other ships, attacked the French
fleet." There had been no formal declaration of war
between France and England; but the privateers of Brest
and Dunkirk had long carried on a course of depredations
on English merchantmen, and many English ships bore
letters of marque and reprisal against the French.” “The
Sovereign, then the largest as well as swiftest vessel in the
English navy—carrying 1,100 men and 88 guns, of which
20 were 44-pounders—led the way, and was the first to
engage the enemy. Its fire was terrible—the second broad-
side sinking one of the French frigates, and its key-shot.”
cutting off the mainmasts of five others. As the frigate
was going down, Blake bore into action, and, immediately
singling out the Donadieu, commanded by one of the
Knights of Malta, he ran alongside, and boarded her.
The rapidity of the attack, and the instantaneous advan-
tages gained, disconcerted the French : some struck their
colours—some fled, fiercely pursued by the Sovereign and
the lighter vessels towards Dunkirk; and in a few hours
the whole body of the French squadron, ships of war,
fireships, and transports, were either gone down or safely
harboured under the guns of Dover Castle. Dunkirk
immediately surrendered to the Archduke Leopold.”4
It is most important to call attention to the policy of
the Parliament and Council of State in this matter, as
compared with the policy afterwards pursued by Cromwell,
when he had destroyed the Parliament and Council of
' Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 173, new Council of State.
edition ; London, 1858; Hobbes's * Chain-shot.
Behemoth, p. 293. * Dixon's Robert Blake, p. 173, new
* There are very many orders to edition, London, 1858.
this effect in the Order Book of the
1652.] DE WITT AND DE RU YTER. 349
State. France was at this time a Power rising into a
condition that was to make her dangerous not only to the
peace but to the liberty of Europe. Spain, on the contrary,
had long been and was still sinking. It was, therefore,
the part of sagacious statesmen to throw the weight of the
power of England into that scale where it would be likely
to produce good, and not evil. The statesmen of the
Parliament of England, of whom Blake may be reckoned
One, consequently sought to weaken France rather than
further to depress and weaken Spain. Cromwell pursued
an opposite course, and threw the power of England into
the wrong scale; though he discovered his mistake before
he died, and when it was too late to remedy it. This was
one of the evils which Cromwell’s usurpation inflicted
upon England. We shall have to note many more in the
sequel; and if there appear—
—On History's fruitless page
Ten thousand conquerors for a single Sage,
History’s page may nevertheless be not altogether fruitless,
if it hold up as a warning to after-ages some of the terrible
calamities which ignoble ambition brings upon mankind.
A very few days after Blake's encounter with the French
fleet under the Duke of Vendôme, the Dutch fleet of sixty
sail, under the command of De Witt and De Ruyter,
appeared off the South Foreland. The intelligence reached
the Council of State on Saturday, the 11th of September,
1652. The Council met on the following day, Sunday,
the 12th of September, and proceeded, with their usual
promptitude, energy, and ability, to take the steps which
the emergency called for. The mode in which the Coun-
cil of State did its business on such an occasion will
best appear from the following minutes, all made on that
Sunday :— -
350 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to enclose to
him the intelligence received from Deal and Dover of a
Dutch fleet appearing on the back side of the South Sand
FIead.” " ---------- " - F -
“That the Governor of Dover take care that all the
Dutch and French prizes be secured, lest the Dutch fleet
should any way attempt to seize them.””
“That a letter be written to the Bailiffs of Yarmouth, to
let them know of the intelligence the Council have received,
of a Dutch fleet appearing on the South Sand Head; to
desire them to give order to the masters and commanders
of such ships as are or shall come into Yarmouth Roads,
to be careful how they put forth to sea, but to stay for
some time till they receive further order from the Council;
and to desire them to send to Hull, Lynn, Boston, Scar-
borough, and Newcastle, to the same effect.” "
On Friday, the 17th of September, the Council of State
made the following order:-‘‘That a letter be written to
Captain Moulton to take notice of the receipt of his ; to
desire him to send out a small boat to take notice of the
motions of the Dutch fleet off the Beachie [Beachy Head];
and to give notice of their being there to as many English
merchants as they can meet with, to the end they may
avoid them.” “
About noon on the 28th of September, “we got sight
of the Dutch fleet,” says Blake, “standing to the west-
ward. Between three and four in the afternoon, they got
their fleet together, being sixty sail,” and, hauling their
* Order Book of the Council of State, 17, 1652.
Sunday, September 12, 1652, MS. State * The Dutch statement is : “ The
Paper Office. Dutch fleet, commanded by Vice-Ad-
* Ibid. same day. miral De Witt, after the departure of
* Ibid. same day. the ten ships that were detached from it,
“Ibid. Friday morning, September consisted of sixty-four men-of-war, and
1652.] THE DUTCH ADMIRALS DEFEATED BY BLAKE. 351
foresails upon their masts, made ready to fight.” During
the interval between the fleets’ first coming in sight of each
other and the commencement of the action, De Witt, who
commanded the Dutch fleet, left his own ship of forty guns,
and went on board the largest of the India ships of fifty-
six guns, where he “wore the flag, his own ship taking it
in. Tromp's flag-ship, the Brederode, was in the fleet;
but the men in her would not receive De Witt.” This
proceeding may be considered as attributable partly to the
intractable character of the Dutch seamen, partly to their
opinion of the professional superiority of Tromp to DeWitt,
and partly to the personal characters of the two com-
manders; for, says the Dutch writer already quoted,
“Martin Tromp was as much beloved by the seamen
for his mild temper, as De Witt was hated by them
for his cruelty.” “
It is impossible to make a narrative, which is obscure
from its brevity, clearer by conjectural interpolations.
I therefore give the few words in which Blake describes
the fight: “There were then by me the Vice-Admiral
[Penn, and some others; but a great part of the fleet was
25 2
that of the English, under the conduct
of Admiral Blake, was composed of
sixty-eight. But the English ships
were much better furnished for the
war than the Dutch.”—Life of Cor-
nelius Van Tromp, p. 77. The writer
adds that De Witt resolved to fight
the English fleet in opposition to De
Ruyter's advice.
1 Blake to the Council of State,
from aboard the Resolution, off the
North Foreland, October 2, 1652; from
a MS. copy of the despatch, among Sir
W. Penn's Papers, published by Mr.
Granville Penn in his Memorials of
Admiral Sir William Penn, London,
1833, vol. i. pp. 450–453.
* Blake says, “De Witt and Ruyter
commanded the Dutch fleet, each of
them wearing a flag on the maintop.”
—Blake to the Council of State, same
date.
3 Admiral Sir William Penn to
George Bishop, Esq., Whitehall—James,
in Margate Roads, October 2, 1652;
from the original in Sir W. Penn's
handwriting, published in Mr. Gran-
ville Penn's Memorials of Admiral Sir
William Penn, vol. i. pp. 446–450.
4 Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
p. 83.
352 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
astern, by reason of their late weighing in the Downs,
which I suppose was occasioned by the late storm we had
there. As soon as a considerable part was come up to us,
the Dutch then tacking, we bore in right with them, their
Admiral in the head. I commanded no guns to be fired
till we came very near them; and, by means of their
tacking, the greatest part of our fleet came suddenly to
be engaged, and the dispute was very hot for a short time,
continuing till it was dark night.”" -
The statement that the greatest part of the English fleet
came suddenly to be engaged by means of the Dutch
fleet’s tacking is somewhat explained by the report of
Sir W. Penn. “About four,” he says, “most of our fleet
being come near, Our General bore in amongst them. We
presently filled to bear after him; but it pleased God
to disappoint us, being aground upon a sand, supposed
the Kentish-Knock.” It was reasonably smooth, and
for my part I did not feel her strike; the master and
others said they did; but the man that hove the lead
overboard said we had not three fathoms water, by which
account it was too true. The Sovereign was near musket-
shot without us, and struck several times. The goodness
of God was eminent to us in this particular, for hereby we
were forced to tack our ship to clear ourselves of the sand;
and, indeed, it fell out better for doing execution upon the
enemy than we could have cast it ourselves; for, as the
Dutch fleet cleared themselves of our general, he standing
to the northward, and they to the southward, we fell patt
to receive them, and so stayed by them till the night
55 3 -
caused our separation.
| Blake to the Council of State, the mouth of the Thames.”—Note in
October 2, 1652. Granville Penn, vol. i. p. 447.
* “A small sand, about S. by W., * Admiral Sir W. Penn to George
from the east end of the Long Sand, at Bishop, Esq., October 2, 1652.
1652.] BATTLE OF THE NORTH FORELAND. 353
The Dutch account of the battle is this:—“De Ruyter
had the vanguard, De Witt the main body of the fleet,
and De Wilde commanded the rear. And Evertz attended
besides with a body of reserve, to be ready to give assistance
to those that should have need. The two fleets, piercing
one into the other, plied one another hotly with their
cannon. De Ruyter and De Witt did wonders, but for all
they could do, in a little time they were so roughly
handled that they had much ado to turn themselves. De
Ruyter had a great many killed and wounded; he had
received four shots between wind and water. The main-
yard of his ship was overturned to the left side, and his
main and mizen sails, as well as his rigging, were all torn
to pieces.” "
Comparing these three accounts, we are led to the con-
clusion that Blake, on this occasion, broke the Dutch line,
and, to use the words of Lord Rodney (already quoted in
this chapter), “defeated the broken parts by detail.” The
operation must have appeared to Blake so much a matter
of course, and any other proceeding so “contrary to com-
mon sense,” as Lord Rodney says, that he considered it
quite needless and a waste of words to dilate upon it.
That night the two fleets lay in sight of each other;
“we,” says Blake, “refitting our ships, which were much
torm.” ” “All night,” writes Penn, “we could see their
lights plain, a small distance to leeward of us; which
made us believe they wished to engage us the next morning.
As the day broke, we saw the Dutch fleet N.E. more than
two leagues from us. . . . Now I shall tell you what
damage, visibly, we did them in the engagement. One
of my squadron, Captain John Mildmay, in the Nonsuch,
Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, p. 78. ber 2, 1652 in Granville Penn, vol. i.
* Blake to the Council of State, Octo- p. 451.
WOL. II. A. A
354 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
took a fly-boat of near 500 tons, with thirty pieces of
ordnance; and, presently after, took possession of another
frigate of thirty guns, twelve whereof brass, who had all
her masts shot by the board, and lay like a wreck in the
sea. This he was forced to quit again about midnight,
being driven to leeward near the Holland’s fleet. He
took the Hollanders out of her, and suffered her to sink,
she being very leaky. On board the fly-boat he had De
Witt's rear-admiral, who quitted his frigate, that had in
her two brass guns, but also in the other's condition, without
masts. On Tuesday, before we engaged, we told fifty-nine
sail, besides small vessels, and the next morning could
not tell above fifty-two, two whereof without bolt-sprits.
In the morning betimes, we saw one ship without
masts in the midst of their fleet, which was presently after
Sunk.” "
“The next morning” (29th September), continues Blake,
“being little wind and variable, we bore with them as fast
as we could, they seeming awhile to stay for us,” till after
noon, when the wind coming northerly, they made all sail
they could, and stood away to the eastward, towards their
own coast. We followed them as much as possibly we
could, they then having the wind of us. Many shots
passed between some of our headmost ships and their stern
fleet; but nothing could engage them. Then, it beginning
to grow dark, we tacked to get our fleet together; and, if
we might, get to the weather-gage. And being then half
Channel over, it was advised by the captain, master, and
| Sir W. Penn to George Bishop, the plans of the Dutch commander.
Esq., October 2, 1652, in Granville It is stated that the desire of DeWitt
Penn, vol. i. p. 449. to risk another engagement was over-
* This and the expression used by ruled in a council of war by De
Penn, as quoted above, would seem to Ruyter and Evertz—Life of Cornelius
indicate that a change took place in Van Tromp, p. 79.
1652.] RETREAT OF THE DUTCH. 355
mates, the pilot and others, to lie close upon that tack till
ten of the clock, that so we might have length enough
to spend that night, presuming likewise that they would
tack before the morning, which would again have brought
us together if the wind had stood; but it pleased God that
it proved but little wind that night, which was westerly.
The next morning (30th) the wind came at S.W.; and
from the topmast-head, we discovered their fleet, and
stood away after them ; many of our frigates ahead of us,
some so far that they saw West Gable. Then, perceiving
that they fled from us as fast as they could, and bent their
course for Goree, it growing less wind, I sent for the vice
and rear-admiral; and also a great part of the captains
being then come aboard for a supply of some necessaries,
we advised together what was fittest to be done; and,
it appearing that the merchant-ships were almost, the
most part altogether, out of victuals, and ours not able to
supply them, it was resolved that we should return to our
coast.
“What harm we have received by loss of men, or other-
wise, I cannot yet give your Honours a just account. In
our ship we have only three that we know slain, whereof
our lieutenant, Captain Purvis, is one ; about twenty hurt;
which is a great merey of God, considering the multitudes
of shot flying among us, and our nearness each to other in
the fight. We are also bound, with much thankfulness,
to acknowledge God’s goodness towards us, in affording
us such fair weather and smooth water at Otir engage-
ment; otherwise, many of our great ships might have
perished without a stroke from the enemy; for both this ship
[the Resolution] and the James touched once or twice, and
the great ship [Sovereign] had three or four rubs upon the
Kentish Knock. What loss the enemy hath sustained we
A A 2
-356 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
know not. Three of their ships were wholly disabled at
the first brunt, having lost all their masts; and another,
as he was towing off the rear-admiral, was taken by Captain
Mildmay ; and the second day they were many less in
number than the first. The rear-admiral and two other
captains are prisoners, who say that they conceive by the
striking of DeWitt's antient, and the putting forth another
of a blue colour, that he is slain.” "
On the 4th of October the Council of State ordered a
letter to be written to the Lord Mayor, directing him to
prepare reception in the several hospitals and in the Savoy
for the wounded in the late engagement between General
Blake and the Dutch. They also ordered the Governors
of Deal and Sandown Castles to draw into their respective
castles the guns placed in works for defence of the fleet
commanded by Sir George Ayscue. At the same time thirty
frigates were ordered to be built.”
The following minute, which I transcribe from a rough
draft in Secretary Thurloe's handwriting, affords very im–
portant evidence respecting
* Blake to the Council of State,
October 2, 1652, in Granville Penn, vol.
i, pp. 451, 452. DeWitt was not slain.
* Order Book of the Council of State,
October 4, 1652, MS. State Paper Office.
—The following minute shows the size
of some of their frigates: “That
Captain Pett be directed to build the
frigate which he is now going in hand
with 115 foot [sic] by the keel.”—Ibid.
July 2, 1652. It would appear from
this that the Parliament were building
larger frigates than those formerly
built. The Sovereign, before men-
tioned, was much above the average.
A correspondent of Strafford, writing
in October 1637, thus describes the
Sovcreign: “She is 1,637 tons, the
goodliest ship that was ever built in
the difference between the
England. The length of her keel is
128 foot, her main breadth 48 foot,
her length 232 foot, her height, from
the bottom of the keel to the top of
her lanthorn, 76 foot. She carries 144
great guns of several sorts, and 11
anchors; one weighing 4,400 lbs.”—
Strafford's Letters and Dispatches, vol.
ii. p. 116. This shows that some
portion, though not a large portion, of
the “ship-money” was applied to the
purpose of shipbuilding. This un-
usually large ship was intended to
make a show of the use of the ship-
money. It was but a show, for the
utter inefficiency of the navy, at the
time when Charles I.1evied ship-money,
is notorious.
1652.] PETITION OF SIR, OLIVER, FLEMING. 357
Government of the Long Parliament and the Government
of the Stuarts : —
“The Council, having considered of a petition of Sir
Oliver Fleming, Knight, find that by an Ordinance of Par-
liament, made the 2nd November, 1643, Sir Oliver Fleming
was appointed Master of the Ceremonies. That the Coun-
cil is informed that the profits and incidents of the said
office were in the king's time worth about £1,000 per an-
num; but now there is only the antient £200 per annum,
payable out of the Exchequer, gratuities from foreign public
ministers and other profits being laid down as dishonourable
to the Commonwealth. That the said sum of £200 per annum
is not wages sufficient for the support of the said Sir Oliver
Fleming in the quality the said employment doth necessi-
tate him to live in ; the slenderness whereof for the time
past having (as is set forth in his petition) reduced him to
wants, and constrained him to contract great debts. Upon
consideration of all which, it is the opinion of the Council
that the case and condition of the said Sir Oliver Fleming
be humbly represented to the Parliament, to the end they
may be pleased to settle a fit and competent salary upon
the said office, that neither the said Sir Oliver Fleming,
nor others that shall enjoy it after him, may be under the
temptation of doing things dishonourable to the Common-
wealth. And in respect he hath served for many years past
for so small an allowance as £200 per annum in which
time his services have been very many, wherein he hath
demeaned himself faithfully to the Commonwealth, and
very diligently, having under him no Marshal of the Cere-
monies, as formerly—to confer upon him such reward
as the Parliament shall think fit; which may in some
measure help him out of his present debt, and remain upon
him and his family as a mark of their bounty. And the
358 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XIV.
Lord-General and Mr. Neville, or either of them, are de-
sired humbly to represent this to the Parliament.” "
The following minute also presents important evidence
of the exemption of the Council of State from all corrupt
favouritism, as well as of their conscientious care in their
choice of those employed in their service—evidence emi-
nently corroborative of the testimony even of their enemies,
that “they were a race of men most indefatigable and in-
dustrious in business, always seeking for men fit for it, and
never preferring any for favour, nor by importunity” —
“That the petition of Andrew Brograve, Christopher
Pett, and Mr. Taylor, desiring the place and employment
of Mr. Peter Pett [Master-Shipwright, corresponding to
Surveyor of the Navy], deceased, be referred to the con-
sideration of the Committee for the Admiralty, who are to
inform themselves of the fitness of the petitioners, or any
other persons, for that employment, and report what they
find concerning them to the Council.”
Ihave in a former page noticed some errors of the Coun-
cil of State in political economy; and I may therefore give
here, as the more remarkable, the following minute on the
subject of Free Trade with France:–
“That it be humbly represented to the Parliament as
the opinion of this Council, that it is of great advantage to
this State in many respects to have a free trade and com-
merce between this Commonwealth and many ports and
places in France; and therefore that the Parliament be
humbly moved to give liberty and licence, by such means
and under such restrictions as they shall think fit, for such
* Order Book of the Council of State, and State of England, vol. ii. p. 30.
Thursday, July 15, 1652, MS. State * Order Book of the Council of State,
Paper Office. Monday, August 2, 1652, MS, State
* Roger Coke, Detection of the Court Paper Office.
1652.] AMBASSADORS FROM THE KING OF DENMARK. 359
trade and commerce as aforesaid, notwithstanding an Act,
intituled An Act prohibiting the importing of any Wines,
Wool, or Silk, from the Kingdom of France into the Com-
monwealth of England or Ireland, or any of the Dominions
thereunto belonging.”" -
On the 18th of May, two ambassadors-extraordinary
had arrived in London from the King of Denmark.” The
mode of their reception will be seen by the following
minutes of that date:— . .
“That thirty coaches be provided, to accompany the
Danish ambassadors from Tower Hill.” ”
“That the same proportion of diet as to the Dutch—
viz., forty dishes for first and second courses, and twenty
dishes of fruit and sweetmeats for each meal—be allowed,
and a convenient allowance for other tables for their at-
tendants.” “ -
“That the ambassadors be entertained nine meals, and
that sewers, butlers, and such other officers as shall be
requisite be provided; and that £300 be immediately
paid to Mr. Bond, to make provisions against their arrival,
to be paid out of the Council’s contingencies.” "
“That some members be appointed to dine with them,
and sup with them.” "
“That plate be delivered out for their service.” "
1 Order Book of the Council of 1652.
State, Thursday, July 29, 1652, MS. * Ibid. same time.
State Paper Office. * Ibid. same time.
* Ibid. Tuesday morning, May 18, * Ibid. same time.
1652. * Ibid. same time.
* Ibid. Tuesday afternoon, May 18,
CHAPTER XV.
THE two great naval Powers of the world were now at open
war with each other. The Dutch Government sought to
strengthen themselves by engaging other nations in their
quarrel with the English Parliament. They sent ambas-
sadors to Denmark, to Poland, and to other Powers in the
North of Europe, to engage them in a league against
England. The English Council of State showed that they
were fully aware of the importance of this step, by their
manner of treating the ambassadors of the King of
Denmark. The following minutes furnish very signi-
ficant evidence on this point :- * . -
“That letters be written to the Lord Grey and Mr.
The mas Chaloner, to desire them to permit the Lords
Ambassadors Extraordinary from the King of Denmark
to take their pleasure in the parks under their command,
and to kill in them what venison they shall think fit.”
“That Sir Oliver Fleming, Master of the Ceremonies,
do acquaint the Lords Ambassadors Extraordinary from
the King of Denmark that the Council have given order
to the keepers of Hide [sic] Park, and of Hampton-Court
Park, to permit their Excellencies to take their pleasure
in those parks as oft as they shall think fit, and in them
to kill what venison they please.””
There were reasons stronger than those arising from
Order Book of the Council of State, Paper Office.
Wednesday, July 28, 1652, MS. State * Ibid. same day.
1652. SHIPS SEIZED BY THE KING OF DENMARK. 361
any fear of the naval power of Denmark—which, in truth,
was never at any time great, except in the form of pirates
or sea-robbers—to induce the sagacious statesmen who
then governed England to offer such civilities to the
Danish ambassadors. There was at that very time in the
harbour of Copenhagen a fleet of English merchantmen,
laden with naval stores, which were urgently needed in
the English dockyards, and which the Council of State
But when Frederick III.,
then King of Denmark, had succeeded to the crown, four
years before this time, the kingdom of Denmark had been
brought to a very low condition by the wars of the last
reign; and it appeared to Frederick III. that the best
mode of replenishing his exhausted exchequer was to seize
were most anxious to Secure.
the fleet of English merchantmen laden with naval stores
in the harbour of Copenhagen." By this act of piracy (for
such I think it may be fairly considered), this Danish
King obtained at once a large supply to his exchequer,
* “That the paper concerning the
detaining of the English ships at
Copenhagen by the King of Denmark,
which was now sworn at the Council,
be part of the report which is to be
made to the Parliament concerning
that affair.”—Order Book of the Coun-
cil of State, Thursday morning, Oc-
tober 21, 1652, MS. State Paper Office.
“That it be referred to the Committee
for Foreign Affairs to confer with some
from New England, concerning the fur-
nishing from them of the commodities
usually had from the Eastlands for the
accommodating of the shipping of this
nation.”—Ibid. Monday, November 1,
1652. “That a letter be written to
General Blake, to desire him to give
orders to all the ships in the service
of the Commonwealth, to make stay of
all ships and vessels which they shall
meet with belonging to the King of
Denmark, and to send them into the
first convenient port free from all cm-
bezzlement, to be there kept till fur-
ther orders shall be given concerning
them, by the Parliament or Council.”
—Ibid. same day. The following
minute also shows the care of the
Council to make provision for the
great naval war they were now en-
gaged in : “That a letter be written
to the wardens of the several forests
throughout this nation, to require them
to suffer no timber to be felled in their
respective forests, upon any pretext
whatsoever, without special order from
the Parliament or Council of State.”
—Ibid. Friday, October 29, 1652.
:
*
:
Q
o
©
362 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
and an alliance with Holland. The alliance with Holland
was probably more useful to him than an alliance with
England would have been; for Holland was much nearer
to him, and therefore more able either to injure or assist
him. But if Blake, in requital for the wrong and insult
done to England, had destroyed his fleet and battered
down his capital about his ears, he would not have had
much cause to congratulate himself on the wisdom of his
policy. And something of that kind Blake would have
probably done had not Cromwell, for his own purposes,
preferred to keep Blake at as great a distance from himself
as he could. -
As the naval stores thus seized by the King of Denmark
consisted chiefly of hemp and tar, the Council of State,
with their usual vigilant activity, looked about to supply
the wants of the navy by other means, as appears by the
following minute —“That it be referred to the Committee
of the Admiralty to confer with a certain person, who pro-
pounds the making of pitch and tar out of the fir-timber
in Scotland” [a proof that Scotland was not then bare of
timber, as Dr. Johnson affirmed it to be a century after
this time]; “and to report to the Council their opinions
concerning the business, after they have had conference
with him.” "
As the Dutch lied enormously in their statements re-
specting their transactions with the English at this time,
and in none more than with regard to the English treat-
ment of the Dutch prisoners, it will be proper, in vindi-
cation of the English Government, to give one or two mi-
nutes on this point from the Order Book. A report was
spread abroad in Holland, no doubt for the purpose of
Order Book of the Council of State, Friday, July 30, 1652, MS. State
Paper Office. -
1652.] TREATMENT OF THE DUTCH PRISONERS. 363
exasperating the Dutch people against such “Supposed
barbarity,” that the Dutch prisoners in England were
most of them shut up in the then unfinished and uncovered
College of Chelsey, between four bare walls, laid upon straw
without anything to cover them, exposed to the open sky,
and to all the rigours of the season; so that many of them
died of their ill-treatment. It was further affirmed that
the hard-heartedness of the English went so far as to forbid
those of the Dutch nation that lived in London to assist
them; so that many of them died of starvation, and others,
attempting to escape from such sufferings, were mercilessly
shot or put to the sword by the soldiers.” In answer to
this statement, I will give some minutes of the Council of
State respecting the treatment of the Dutch prisoners,
reminding the reader that 6d. a day was at that time
equivalent to about 28, a day at present, and that it was
the rate of pay the English Parliament allowed to their
own soldiers of the infantry regiments:— -
“That 6d. per diem be allowed for the keeping of
such Dutch prisoners as have been taken and are secured
at Falmouth.” ”
“That orders be given to the Commissioners for sale of
Dutch prizes, to allow 6d. per diem a man for the main-
tenance of such Dutchmen as are prisoners in this Common-
wealth.” 4
* The Dutch writers themselves use
this guarded expression.
* Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
pp. 162, 163: London, 1697.
* Order Book of the Council of State,
Tuesday, August 24, 1652, MS. State
Paper Office.
Ibid. Tuesday, September 7, 1652.
“That a letter be written to the Mayor
of Dover, to desire him, out of the last
#500 assigned to him for the charge
of wounded men and prisoners, to pay
unto Mr. William Whiting, of Canter-
bury, the sum of £89s. 6d., being for
so much disbursed by him at Canter-
bury for the maintenance of the Dutch.”
—Ibid. Monday, October 18, 1652.
364
COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
“That the Dutch prisoners at Hull be discharged, and
58. a man given them to carry them home.”
The following minutes respecting the treatment of the
French prisoners taken in the engagement with the Duke
of Vendôme's fleet afford further evidence of the humane
treatment exercised by the Council of State towards their
prisoners of war, even while they complained, as the
minutes show, that such prisoners were “a very great
charge to the Commonwealth *:—
“That order be given to the collectors for prize-goods
to allow 6d. per diem a man for the maintenance of such
French as are prisoners in this Commonwealth.””
“That a letter be written to the Mayor of Dover and
Governor of Dover Castle, to let them know that they are
to send away into France the Frenchmen which were
lately taken prisoners, and landed there, reserving only
the masters of the ships taken, and so many of the mariners
as may be sufficient to give testimony in the Court of
Admiralty, when they shall proceed to the adjudication of
the ships, in which they were taken; to let them know
that 6d. per diem is ordered for the maintenance of the
private men; and for the officers they are to take care
1 Order Book of the Council of
State, Friday afternoon, September
17, 1652, MS. State Paper Office.—
There was, at least at this time,
a discharge of prisoners on both
sides, as appears from the following
minutes: “That such of the Dutch
prisoners as are now at Dover and Can-
terbury be released, and permitted to
repair to their own country.”—Ibid.
Wednesday, October 6, 1652. “That
the Mayor of Dover do pay the sum
of £20 to the master of the vessel who
brought over from Ostend 120 English
seamen, who had been taken by the
Dutch, and dismissed in order to repair
to England.”—-Ibid. same day. “That
a letter be written to General Blake, to
let him know that he is to discharge the
Dutch captains with him, and to permit
them to return home, unless he knows
that the Dutch detain any Englishmen
of that quality prisoners, which, if he
do, he is to detain them, or such of
them as he shall think fit, for the
making of exchange for such of the
English of that quality as shall be de-
tained by the Dutch.”—Ibid. Monday,
October 11, 1652. .
* Ibid. Tuesday, September 7, 1652.
1652.] DISPOSAL OF DUTCH PRIZE-GOODS. 365
that they be civilly treated; and for the charge thereof,
the Council will take care to order the payment of it; and
they are to be desired to take care likewise of the sick men.” "
The following minutes show what Blake's energy and
success did towards the support of the Government:-
“That a letter be written to the Committee for the
Navy, to desire them that such moneys as shall arise upon
the sale of Dutch prizes may be reserved towards the pay-
ing of seamen.””
“That order be given to the Commissioners for sale of
Dutch prizes, to pay unto the Treasurer for the Navy such
money as they have made by the sale of Dutch prizes, it
being for the paying off of the ships in the State's service,
as they come in from sea.” ” e
“That the Commissioners for Prize-goods do deliver
unto the Corporation for the Poor the three busses taken
from the Dutch, now in the River of Thames, together
with the nets and other fishing utensils which were taken
with them, to be employed by the said Corporation.” "
“That order be given to the Commissioners for Dutch
Prize-goods, to give direction to one of their deputies at
Plymouth to bring up the chests of gold taken and brought
in by Captain Stoakes, and to be very careful in the
bringing of them up, that they be not violated and the
gold embezzled; and that it be signified unto them that
order is given to Major-General Desborowe to appoint a
fit guard of horse to come along with the gold; as also
that they are to take especial care that a strict search be
made after such writings and papers as were found aboard
the ships in which the gold was at their taking, that none
may be lost which may be of use in the adjudication of
Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Monday, September 6, 1652.
State, Wednesday, September 8, 1652, * Ibid. Thursday, September 9, 1652.
MS. State Paper Office. * Ibid. same day.
•
366 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV,
the said ships, which they are in this case, and in all
others of this nature, to deliver to Doctor Walker to be
made use of by him.” " -
“That a letter be written to Major-General Desborowe,
to acquaint him with the taking of the gold chests from
Guinea; to desire him to afford a competent guard of
horse for the bringing of them up in safety to London.””
In their great need of money at this time, the Council
entertained some propositions for the discovery of gold
nearer home than Guinea :-
“That all the members of the Council, or any three of
them, be appointed a Committee, to consider of such pro-
positions as shall be made unto them, for the discovery of
mines of gold and silver in any of the territories of this
Commonwealth, and to report the same to the Council,
with their opinions thereupon.” "
“That the proposition delivered in to the Council by
Mr. Scot, concerning the discovery of gold in Scotland, be
referred to the consideration of the Committee for Mines.”4
The all-pervading vigilance and prompt and energetic
action of this Council of State were equal to those of the
most energetic single ruler. If such an affair as a sea-
man’s being killed by his captain had occurred under the
Government of the Stuarts, it would most probably never
have attracted the attention of the Government. It cer-
tainly never would, if the captain had been a Prince Ru-
pert, or anyone favoured by him. The Council of State
proceeded in a different fashion. One cf their captains
had killed one of his seamen. The following minutes show
what followed:— ".
“That three of the deputies of the Serjeant-at-Arms
do go down to Rye, and take into their custody the late
Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. same day.
State, Friday, September 24, 1652, MS. * Ibid. Monday, September 20, 1652.
State Paper Office. * Ibid, same day. º
1652.] CASE OF CAPTAIN WARREN. 367
captain of the Merlin frigate, and bring him up to the
Council.” " -
“That a letter be written to the master of the Merlin
frigate, to desire him to send up three such persons, along
with the late captain, as can testify concerning the action
of his killing a man aboard the frigate.””
“That a warrant be drawn for the committal of Captain
Warren to Newgate for murther, in order to be tried for
the same.” ”
By the 21st of October, that is, just three weeks later,
Captain Warren had been tried, found guilty of murder,
and executed, as appears from the following minute,
relating to a petition to the Council of State from his
widow –“That the petition of Elenor Warren, widow,
be referred to the Committee of the Admiralty, who are to
consider what may be done thereupon, and report their
opinion thereupon to the Council.” "
The vigilance of the Council of State is further mani-
fested by the following minute :-‘‘That it be referred to
the Committee for Examinations, to examine the complaint
made by some prisoners, of great fees exacted from them
by certain persons who have solicited their release; and
to send for such persons before them, as can give testimony
herein, and likewise for such persons as have exacted such
fees; and examine and report the state of the whole busi-
ness to the Council.” ” -
And their attention to details is shown by the following
order:-
“That the Dutch prize taken by Captain Peacocke,
called the Morning Star, be now named the Plover.””
* Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Monday, October 25, 1652.
State, Friday, September 24, 1652, * Ibid. Saturday morning, October
MS. State Paper Office. 30, 1652. At the same meeting, there
* Ibid. same day. is made in the Order Book the fol-
* Ibid.Thursday, September 30, 1652. lowing memorandum : “Look out
* Ibid. Thursday, October 21, 1652. General Blake's commission.”
368 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
“That an extract of the intelligence, now read in the
Council, from Holland, be sent unto General Blake.””
The following minute, of 12th November, has reference
to a resolution of the Council, to send twenty ships at this
time to the Mediterranean. The Council here committed
a great blunder. By sending off those twenty ships, they
so weakened Blake that he was not a match for Tromp,
and thus met with the only disaster that befel him in the
whole course of his career. The intelligence they had
received, respecting the plans of the Dutch, render their
proceeding the more inexcusable :-
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to acquaint
him with the resolution of the Council, for the sending of
twenty ships to the Streights; to give him a list of the
names of the ships, to let him know that it is not the in-
tention of the Council to disable him * [of course it was not
their intention, but the result was to disable him effectually]
“ (by the taking of these ships) from waiting upon the
service in these parts, which the Council doubt not but
will be supplied by the coming out of others appointed for
the winter guard. However they thought fit, before they
came to any positive resolution concerning this business, to
acquaint him therewith, to the end that if he had anything
to offer concerning it, it might be taken into consideration.”
* Order Book of the Council of State,
Wednesday, November 10, 1652, MS.
State Paper Office: “That a letter be
written to the Mayor of Dover, to desire
him to speak to the master of the pac-
quet-boat which passeth between that
place and Flanders; that it is the Coun-
cil's pleasure that he do take aboard him
in Flanders all such English seamen as
do come thither to pass into England,
as well those who have left the service
of the Dutch, in obedience to an Act of
Parliament, as also those who have been
taken prisoners by the Dutch, and have
been released, and do and shall repair to
Dunquerque for passing into England;
and to let him know that he is to re-
lieve each of them as shall want it
upon their landing, and place it to ac-
count. And further, to signify to him
that the master of the pacquet-boat
shall have, for every person which he
shall so bring over, according to the
rate he usually hath of other pas-
sengers.”—Ibid. same day.
* Ibid. Friday, November 12, 1652.
1652.] NEW COUNCIL OF STATE FOR 1653. 369
The sending of a fleet of twenty ships to the Streights,
at that particular time, was one blunder of the Council of
State; the granting of so great a number of letters of
marque to privateers or private men-of-war was another.
In regard to the latter, Blake complains in his letter after
the fight with Tromp ; and it would appear, from the
following minute, that he had remonstrated on the subject
of the want of men before the fight:—
“That the letter from General Blake, dated the 21st
instant, for so much of it as refers to men and victuals,
be referred to the consideration of the Committee of the
Admiralty.” "
In November 1652 the House proceeded, for the fifth
and last time, to the election of a new Council of State for
the ensuing year. The Serjeant-at-Arms was Ordered to go
out with his mace, and summon all the members in West-
minster Hall, and the parts adjacent, to attend the House.
The doors were then ordered to be shut, when the number
of members present appeared to be 122. The twenty-one
members of the Council of State to be continued for the
year ensuing were the Lord-General Cromwell, Lord-
Commissioner Whitelock, Lord Chief Justice St. John,
Lord Chief Justice Rolle, Sir Henry Vane, jun., Sir Arthur
Haselrig; Thomas Scott, Herbert Morley, and Dennis Bond,
Esquires; Colonel Purefoy, John Bradshaw, Serjeant-at-law,
John Gurdon, Esq., Lord-Commissioner Lisle, Colonel
Wauton, Sir James Harrington, Sir William Masham,
Thomas Chaloner, and Robert Wallop, Esquires; Sir Gilbert
Pickering, Sir Peter Wentworth, and Nicholas Love, Esq.
The twenty new members now elected were Robert Good-
win, Esq., Alderman Allen, Colonel Thompson, Walter
1 Order Book of the Council of State, Monday, November 22, 1652, MS.
State Paper Office.
WOL. II. B B
370 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
Strickland, Esq., Sir Henry Mildmay, Major-General Skip-
pon, Lord Grey, Colonel Sydney (Algernon Sydney), Edmund
Prideaux, Esq. (Attorney-General), Sir John Trevor, Colo-
nel Norton, Thomas Lister, Esq., Colonel Ingoldsby, Sir
John Bourchier, William Earl of Salisbury, William
Cawley, Esq., Sir William Brereton, John Fielder and
William Say, Esquires, and Major-General Harrison."
It will be observed that Blake was not one of the twenty-
one members of the Council of State for the preceding
year who were re-elected. He was not, therefore, for
more than one year a member of the Council of State.
It will also be observed that Algernon Sydney, who had
never before been a member, was one of the twenty new
members who were now elected members of the Council, to
fill up the places of the twenty members of the last year's
Council who now went out. As Blake was at this time
constantly with the fleet, he could not, even if he had been
re-elected, have been present at the deliberations of the
Council.
On Thursday, the 25th of November 1652, the Council of
State ordered, “Thatthetwoletters of the 24th instant, from
General Blake to the Council, be humbly presented to the
Parliament; and the Parliament put in mind that General
Blake's commission determines upon the 4th of December
next, to the end they may be pleased to declare their
pleasure touching the same.” Blake requested that two
colleagues should be joined with him in the command, as
had been the case in the first year of his naval service.
Accordingly, Colonel Deane (his former colleague) and
General Monk were appointed his colleagues in the
* Commons' Journals, November, State, Thursday, November 25, 1652,
1652, Parl. Hist, vol. iii. p 1379. MS. State Paper Office.
* Order Book of the Council of
1652.] CRIPPLING OF THE CHANNEL FLEET. 3.71
command of the fleet. Both these officers, being then em-
ployed in Scotland, could not for some time take any active
part in the naval war.
I at one time thought that, notwithstanding the inces-
Sant care of the Council of State, and the large sums paid
by them for intelligence, their information was defective
about this time in regard to the movements of the Dutch;
and that they made a distribution of their fleet for the
winter, as if the Dutch preparations for renewing the con-
test would not be completed till the spring. But a careful
examination of their Order Books shows that they were by
no means uninformed of the state of the Dutch fleet and
the great preparations of the Dutch Government. Evi-
dence of this has already been given. And further, on Thurs-
day, the 25th of November 1652, there is a minute, “That
the Lord-General be desired to give order to some foot
forces of the army to march to Dover, Sandown, and Deal,
to be there in readiness to go aboard the ships of this Com-
monwealth, when they shall receive orders from the same
from General Blake.”" And on the following day there is
a minute, “That so much of the Dutch letters as gives the
state of the Dutch fleet be signified to General Blake.””
Notwithstanding all these warnings, however, the Council
of State had, as we have seen, despatched twenty ships of
war to the Mediterranean. Moreover, twenty ships of the
English fleet had been sent to Elsinore, under Captain Ball.”
Penn sailed northward with
an equal number of vessels,
| Order Book of the Council of
State, Thursday, November 25, 1652,
MS. State Paper Office.
* Ibid. Friday, November 26, 1652.
* “Instructions to Captain Ball
upon his repair to the Sound:—1. You
are forthwith to go to the Sound, with
the squadron of ships ordered for that
purpose by the letter you shall here-
with receive, and there take into your
charge such English ships as are home-
ward bound from thence, and use your
best endeavours to convoy them safely
home to their several ports.” The
5th instruction is “to observe such
orders as you shall receive from the
B B 2
372 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
to convoy a fleet of colliers from Newcastle to London.
Twelve ships were stationed in Plymouth Sound, and fifteen
of the ships that had been most damaged were ordered
into the river for repair. Towards the end of November
the Council of State began to perceive, when it was too late,
the blunder they had committed in crippling their Channel
fleet. On Saturday, the 27th of November, the Council
ordered, “That a letter be written to General Blake, to ac-
knowledge the receipt of his of the 26th, and of his intention
to go to sea, where withal the Council is satisfied; and that
the Council have written to Portsmouth, for the State's
ships there to repair to him immediately.” And on the
same day they order, “That a letter be written to Mr.
Willoughby at Portsmouth, to hasten out the Spenker and
other ships of the State there to General Blake; and to
enclose to him a warrant to all captains of ships, to re-
pair forthwith with their ships to General Blake.” But
these orders would, manifestly, not be in time to furnish
any effectual reinforcement to Blake by the 29th of No-
vember. Accordingly, on the 29th of November, Blake
rode in the Channel, between Dover and Calais, with a
fleet, consisting of 37 men-of-war and frigates, the fire-
ships, and a few hoys.
After the defeat of De Witt, related in the preceding
chapter, the States of the United Provinces again cast their
eyes upon Martin Tromp, who, as has been before
stated, “was as much beloved by the seamen for his mild
temper, as De Witt was hated by them for his cruelty.” "
Parliament, the Council of State, or hagen.
General Blake.”—Order Book of the Ibid. Saturday, November 27,
Council of State, Monday, August 30, 1652.
1652, MS. State Paper Office. How- * Ibid, same day.
ever, as has been said, the King of * Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
Denmark seized the fleet of English p. 83.
merchantmen in the harbour of Copen-
1652.] MEETING OF THE HOSTILE FLEETS. 373
Accordingly, at the beginning of November, the States re-
solved to give him the command of the fleet they were then
fitting out. Vice-Admirals Evertz and De Witt, and Rear-
Admiral Floritz, were appointed to command under him.
But De Witt falling sick was put ashore, and De Ruyter
was substituted in his place." The Dutch accounts say
that this Dutch fleet was composed of 73 men-of-war, be-
sides fireships and other smaller vessels, and tenders.”
Blake's own statement is that the Dutch fleet “consisted
of 95 sail, most of them great ships.””
On Monday, the 29th" of November 1652, the hostile
fleets found themselves in presence of each other, between
Blake called a council of war on board
the Triumph, his flag-ship; but it was rather to apprise his
captains of what he had resolved to do, than to ask their
opinion of what ought to be done. He spoke of the situa-
tion of the two nations at that moment, of the superior
force of the enemy, of the distance of his own squadrons;
and ended by declaring his resolution to fight, if it were
necessary, but on no account to fall down the Channel,
leaving the coast towns to be insulted, and perhaps de-
stroyed, by that powerful armament. The captains, as a
matter of course, when the Admiral was a man of Blake’s
commanding character, accepted his decision—though, as
the result proved, they could hardly have all of them ac-
cepted it with alacrity—and returned to their several ships.
All that day the two admirals watched each other’s
movements, with a view to gain the weather-gage. Blake’s
Dover and Calais.
the original letter to the Council, with
| Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, p. 83.
* Ibid].
* Blake's letter to the Council of
State, from aboard the Triumph, in the
Downs, December 1, 1652; printed in
Granville Penn's Memorials of Sir
Wm. Penn (vol. i. pp. 458–460), from
Blake's signature, among Sir W. Penn's
papers.
* This was Old Style, by which the
English then reckoned. The Dutch,
who reckoned by the “New Style,”
make it December 9.
374 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
own account is, that the wind, “which was awhile some-
what variable, after blew strongly at north-west, so that
we could not that day engage. The wind increased at
night, we riding in Dover Road, and the enemy about two
leagues to leeward of us at anchor.” Next morning, the
wind having somewhat abated, the two fleets weighed and
stood away to Dungeness, the English keeping the wind.
“About the pitch of the Nesse,” ” says Blake, “the head-
most of our fleet met and engaged the enemy’s fleet, con-
sisting of 95 sail, most of them great ships—three ad-
mirals,” two vice-admirals, and two rear-admirals. They
passed many broadsides upon us “very near, and yet we had
but six men slain and ten wounded. About the same time,
the Victory was engaged with divers of the enemy, but
was relieved by the Vanguard and some others. The Gar-
land sped not so well; but being boarded by two of their
flags and others, and seconded only by Captain Hoxton,
was, after a hot fight board-and-board, carried by them,
* Blake to the Council of State,
December 1, 1652. – Granville Penn's
Memorials of Sir Wim. Penn, vol. i.
pp. 458–460.
* Some writers have supposed that
by “Nesse” here Blake meant the Naze,
a headland in Essex near the border
of Suffolk. The minutes of the Coun-
cil of State place the matter beyond a
doubt. There is a minute of January
26, 1653, relating to the petition of
“Rachel Hoxon, relict of Captain
Hoxon, commander of the ship Anthony
Bonaventure, who was slain in the
late fight with the Dutch off Dungey
Nesse.”—Order Book of the Coun-
cil of State, Wednesday, January 26
1653, MS. State Paper Office. Also
in a minute of January 12, 1653,
relating to the trial of Captains
Young and Taylor, “the late fight
with the Dutch " is stated to have been
“off Dunginesse.”—Ibid. Wednesday,
January 12, 1653. The name of the
opposite French headland, “Cap Gris
Nez,” has a close resemblance to the
name of the English, if the latter
means “dun nose.”
* There seems to be some confusion
here. There was Tromp, the admiral;
De Ruyter and Evertz, vice-admirals;
and there were also, probably, two
rear-admirals. -
* By “us” he means his own ship,
the Triumph. “Out of 200 men on
board the Garland, at the beginning of
the action, the Captain and 60 officers
and men were killed, and a still greater
number severely wounded. The Bon-
aventure had suffered to an equal
extent.”—Diaon's Robert Blake, p.223,
London, 1852: p. 185, new edition,
London, 1858.
1652.] BATTLE OF DUNGENESS. 375
and his second with him. It was late before I took notice
of it, whereupon I gave order to bear up to them; but im-
mediately our foretopmast was shot away, our mainstay
being shot off before, and our rigging much torn, so that
we could not work our ship to go to their relief. And by
occasion thereof, and night coming on, we were saved our-
selves, who were then left almost alone. As soon as it was
night, we made sail towards Dover Road, and came to
anchor. This morning, the weather growing thick, and
fearing a south wind, we stood away to the Downs, where
(by God’s providence) we now are.” "
Few are the men who can or will acknowledge a defeat.
It may indeed be assumed, as a maxim of strategic science,
that it is one of the duties of a commander to turn a
defeat into a victory, at least in his narrative of it. But
there can be no doubt that the Dutch had on this occa-
sion gained a victory, and were, for the time, masters of
the Channel. The common story that Tromp, after this
affair, carried a broom in his maintop, thereby intimating
that he would sweep the narrow seas of all English
shipping, seems unworthy of the general character of
Tromp, who might have been supposed too great a com-
mander, and too brave a man, to be a braggart. But there
is no occasion on which the manly truthfulness and
genuine modesty of Blake's nature shine forth more con-
spicuously than they do on this. His letter to the Council
of State begins thus: “Right Honourable, I presume
your Honours do long for an account of what hath passed
between us and the Dutch fleet; and I hope you have
hearts prepared to receive evil, as well as good, from the
hands of God.””
Blake to the Council of State, pp. 458, 459.
December 1, 1652, in Granville Penn's * Ibid. vol. i. p. 458.
Memorials of Sir Wm. Penn, vol. i.
376 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
After a short account (already cited) of the battle, Blake
thus proceeds:–“In this account, I am bound to let your
Honours know in general, that there was much baseness
of spirit, not among the merchantmen only, but many of
the State's ships; and, therefore, I make it my earnest
request, that your Honours would be pleased to send down
some gentlemen, to take an impartial and strict exami-
nation of the deportment of several commanders, that you
may know who are to be confided in, and who are not.
It will then be time to take into consideration the grounds
of some other errors and defects, especially the discourage-
ment and want of seamen. I shall be bold at present to
name one, not the least—which is, the great number of private
mem-of-war, especially out of the River of Thames. And I
hope it will not be unreasonable for me, in behalf of myself,
to desire your Honours, that you would think of giving
me, your unworthy servant, a discharge from this employ-
ment, so far too great for me; especially, since your
Honours have added two such able gentlemen for the
undertaking of that charge: that so I may spend the
remainder of my days in private retirement, and in prayers
to the Lord for a blessing upon you and the nation. . . . .
At the close of this, I received your Honours’ of the 30th
of November, together with your commission, which I
shall endeavour to put in execution with all the power and
faithfulness I can, until it shall please your Honours to
receive it back again, which I trust will be very speedily;
that so I may be freed from that trouble of spirit which
lies upon me, arising from the sense of my own insuffi-
ciency, and the usual effects thereof—reproach and con-
tempt of men, and disservice of the Commonwealth, which
may be the consequent of both.
* Deane and Monk.
1652.] BLAKE's FLEET IS REINFORCED. 377
“Into what capacity or condition soever it shall please
the Lord to cast me, I shall labour still to approve myself
a faithful patriot, and r
“Your Honours’ most humble servant,
ROBERT BLAKE.
“Triumph, in the Downs, this 1st December, 1652.” 1
On Wednesday, the 1st of December, 1652, the number
present in the Council of State was twenty-eight,” being
eight or ten above the average number. Colonel Sydney
(Algernon Sydney) was one of those present. The Lord-
General (Cromwell) was not present. The energy and
ability with which the Council of State immediately set
about repairing the error they had committed, in Crippling
their Channel fleet, are well worthy of the most careful
attention, and are very interesting as well as very in-
structive. On that day, the 1st of December, 1652, they
made an order:-
“That a letter be written to the three frigates at
Plymouth, to acquaint them with what is come to the
Council, concerning the engagement with the Dutch ; to
desire them, therefore, to sail towards General Blake, now
in the Downs, and to send a ketch before them to the
General, to acquaint him with the orders they have received
from the Council; and to desire his directions, unless they
have already received orders from him in reference to this
Service.” "
On the following day, Thursday, 2nd December, the
Council of State made the following orders:–
* Blake to the Council of State, * Order Book of the Council of
from the original among Sir W. State, Wednesday, December 1, 1652,
Penn's papers.-Granville Penn’s MS. State Paper Office.
Memorials of Sir W. Penn, vol. i. * Ibid. same day.
pp. 458–460.
378 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV:
“That a warrant be drawn, to give power to the captains
of the private men-of-war now in the River of Thames (for
the enabling of them, upon the present occasion, to join
with the fleet with General Blake), to imprest [sic] seamen
for their respective ships; and that this warrant be con-
tinued in force for the space of one month, and no longer;
and the captains of the several ships are to bring in the
numbers of men which they desire.” "
“That three members of the Council—Colonel Wauton,”
Colonel Morley, and Mr. Chaloner—be sent as Commis-
sioners to the fleet with General Blake, to pursue such
measures as the Council shall give unto them.” “ These
Commissioners are empowered to take up money not ex-
ceeding £500, to be disposed by them as they shall see
occasion.* -
“That Mr. Smyth and Major Thompson do repair
aboard the several ships in the State’s service now in the
river, and use all possible endeavours for hastening them
out to General Blake.” " -
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to take
notice to him of the receipt of his, giving an account of
the late engagement with the Dutch; to take notice to him
* Order Book of the Council of move from the command such of the
State, Thursday, December 2, 1652,
MS. State Paper Office.
* This name is sometimes spelt
“Walton,” and sometimes “Wauton;”
it is on this occasion spelt “Wauton.”
* Order Book of the Council of State,
Thursday, December 2, 1652, MS.
State Paper Office.—The following are
among the instructions to these Com-
missioners: “6. You, with the Gene-
ral, are hereby authorised to examine
the deportment of several captains and
commanders, as well of the State's
ships as merchantmen, in the late
fight with the Dutch fleet; and to re-
captains and other commanders as
you, upon examination, shall find not
to have performed their duty in
the said action, and to supply their
places with other fit persons, until the
Council shall take further order.—7.
You are, during your residence there,
to be present at councils of war, and
advise in all things that may emerge
or fall into consideration upon the
place relating to the premises.”—Ibid.
same day.
* Ibid. same day.
* Ibid. same day.
1652.] SHIPS ENGAGED FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE. 379
of his good deportment in that action, and to give him
thanks for the same; and also to acquaint him that the
Council have despatched some Commissioners to him, to
visit him from them, and to consult with him concerning
the carrying on of the public service.
“That the Lord-General be desired to give order to such
foot forces of the army as he shall find necessary, to march
down towards Dover and the seaside in those parts, and to
be there in readiness for further service.””
On the following day, Friday, the 3rd of December, 1652,
the Council of State ordered:— -
“That warrants be issued to the Vice-Admirals of the
adjacent counties, and, where there are no Vice-Admirals,
to the Mayors or Bailiffs and other officers of the port
towns, to imprest seamen for the service of the Common-
Wealth.” ”
“That it be referred to the Commissioners of the Navy,
to treat with Mr. Marston concerning the setting out of
his ships into the public service; and to offer unto him
protection for the freeing of his men from being pressed
into the State’s ships, he undertaking to carry the said
ships to the General [Blake] by a certain day, as they can
agree, and wind and weather shall serve ; and to remain
23 l
there for some time, which the said Commissioners are like-
wise to ascertain with him as they shall be able.
On Saturday the 4th of December they made the follow-
ing orders:—
“That a letter be written to the commanders of the
State’s ships of war at Harwich and Yarmouth, to require
33 4
* Order Book of the Council of minute, made the same day, has re-
State, Thursday, December 2, 1652, ference to Blake's remonstrance re-
MS. State Paper Office. specting the number of private men-
* Ibid. same day. of-war: “That all petitions for pri-
* Ibid. Friday, December 3, 1652. vate men-of-war be read publicly at
* Ibid. same day.—The following the Council.”—Ibid. same day.
380 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
them to make haste to General Blake, now in the Downs,
and to go in consort together; and to take especial care,
in their passage thither, that they be not surprised or
unawares set upon by the enemy.” "
“That the like letters which were sent to the western
ports last night, for the giving notice to them of what hath
happened between the English and Dutch fleets, be de-
spatched thither again, and the same also to the northern
25 2 .
*
ports.
“That a warrant be directed to Mr. Willoughby and
Mr. Coytmore, to repair down the River of Thames to all
ships of war, whether the State's or private men-of-war,
and require them from the Council to hasten to General
IBlake, now in the Downs, with all possible expedition;
and all Justices of the Peace are required to permit the
said Mr. Willoughby and Mr. Coytmore to pass upon the
Lord’s Day, it being for a special service.”
“That a letter be written to General Blake, to acquaint
him with what the Council hath done for the giving him
an addition of strength; to let him know that (in regard
the state of affairs is before him, and he hath a perfect
understanding of them), the Council do leave it to him,
upon the place, to do what he may for his own defence and
the service of the Commonwealth.” “
“That General Monk be sent unto, and desired to be in
readiness, at twenty-four hours’ warning, to go to sea, to
take upon him the charge to which he hath been appointed
by the Parliament.”"
“That the Parliament be humbly moved to give orders
* Order Book of the Council of State, * Ibid. same time.
Saturday afternoon, December 4, 1652, * Ibid. same time.
MS. State Paper Office. * Ibid. same time.
* Ibid. same time.
1652.] THE COAST GARRISONS STRENGTHENED. 381
for the granting of commissions to General Deane and
General Monk, as to the exercising that command at sea,
to which they have already been appointed by order of
Parliament; and the Lord President [of the Council of
State] is desired humbly to move the Parliament herein.”
“The Lord-General Cromwell acquainting the Council
that he had drawn out 500 men out of the guards here, and
given them orders to march to Dover and the seacoast
thereabouts, and likewise had commanded Colonel Rich’s
regiment of horse to draw together upon that coast, the
Council doth approve thereof; and desire his Lordship to
give further orders for speeding away the said 500 men,
and also to give Orders to another regiment of horse to
strengthen the seacoast with.”
The indefatigable exertions of the Council of State, to
put their fleet into that thoroughly efficient condition
which it displayed in the next great fight with the Dutch,
in the following February, can only be known completely
by a careful perusal of their minutes. But to give these
minutes in full would, I fear, appear tedious to the reader.
On this, however, the last and greatest occasion they were
to have for the exercise of their great administrative
genius, some indulgence may, perhaps, be accorded to an
attempt to give as many of them as may convey some idea
at least of the labours of the most remarkable body of
statesmen that ever sat together in Council.
On Sunday the 5th of December, 1652, the Council recom-
mend Harwich to Blake, as a port to refit, instead of Lee
* Order Book of the Council of State, Commander-in-Chief there, the Parlia-
Saturday afternoon, December 4, 1652, ment having appointed Major-General
MS. State Paper Office.—At the same Deane, the present Commander-in-
time, “The Lord-General is desired to Chief, to be one of the Generals of the
think of some fit person, to be imme- Fleet.”—Ibid. same time.
diately despatched into Scotland, to be * Ibid. same time.
882 CoMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [Char. xv.
Boad, but leave the decision to him. Blake chose to come
into the river, to Lee Road. On Monday morning the
Council order, “That a letter be written to General Blake,
to take notice to him of his coming into Lee Road; to desire
him that he will forthwith give a particular account to the
Council of the state of the fleet, and be very careful in the
Reeping of his men aboard.” On the afternoon of the same
day, the Council ordered, “That letters be sent to desire
those of the western ports to set out some small boats to give
notice to merchant-ships homewards bound of what hath
happened, that they may take care of their own safety.””
“That the Council do approve of the Lord President’s
opening of letters directed to the Council, and authorise
him to open such as shall come, and thereupon to summon
the Council if he shall see cause.” ”
On the 17th of December the Council of State wrote
to Blake, “to let him know they have received an account
from the Commissioners sent down to him of the state
of the fleet, and of his readiness to give them assistance
in the business for which they were sent ; to return him
thanks for his faithful service, and to acquaint him that
all possible endeavours are using for the speedy setting
forth of the fleet to sea.” 4
“Upon consideration had of the qualities and rates of
the several ships which are to be set forth in the fleet for
the next summer, it is ordered that it be declared that all
such merchant-ships as shall be taken on and hired for
that service, shall be vessels carrying twenty-six guns at
the least, and not under.””
* Order Book of the Council of * Ibid. Wednesday morning, De-
State, Monday morning, December cember 8,
6, 1652, MS. State Paper Office. * Ibid. Friday, December 17, 1652.
* Ibid. Monday afternoon, December * Ibid. same day.
6, 1652.
1652.] RIGOUR OF THE PRESS-WARRANTS. 383
“That the captains of such ships as shall be hired for
the service of the Commonwealth shall be chosen and
placed by the State; and the other officers are likewise to
be approved of.” "
The following minute affords a graphic picture, in a
small compass, of the rigour with which the press-warrants
were executed, in order to man the State’s ships in that
great naval war:— -
“That a warrant of protection be granted to Thomas
Girling, waterman, son of Christopher Girling of Richmond,
in the county of Surrey, waterman, to protect him from
being imprested into the State's service, in regard that by
his labour only his aged father is supported, who is unable
now to support himself; and that he, the said Christopher,
hath lost two sons already in the service of the Common-
wealth.” ”
“That order be given to the Commissioners for Prize-
goods, to bring up the prize-silver and cochineal from Ply-
mouth, and to coin the silver in the Tower of London;
and to let them know that Major-General Desborowe is
written unto, to afford convoy to the bringing of it up.” "
Order Book of the Council of State,
Friday, December 17, 1652, MS.
the loss of all, when they may be quiet
and receive the same pay.”—Granville
State Paper Office.—Sir Wm. Penn, in
a letter to the Lord-General Cromwell,
dated June 2, 1652, says: “My Lord,
it is humbly conceived that the State
would be far better served if, as for-
merly, they placed commanders in all
the merchant-ships taken up; for the
commanders now employed, being all
part-owners of their ships, I do believe
will not be so industrious in engaging
an enemy as other men; especially con-
sidering that by engagement they not
only waste their powder and shot, but
are liable to receive damage in their
masts, rigging, and hull, and endanger
Penn's Memorials of Sir Wm. Penn,
vol. i. p. 427, from Milton's Collection.
* Order Book of the Council of
State, Wednesday, January 5, 1653,
MS. State Paper Office.
* Ibid. Friday, January 7, 1653–
On the same day an order was made,
“That Mr. Isaac Dorislaus be ap-
pointed Solicitor in the Court of Ad-
miralty on the behalf of the Common-
wealth, and that he have the allow-
ance of £250 per annum for himself,
and a clerk in consideration of this
employment.” At the same time in-
structions for the directing of him in
384 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
The wording of the following minute is curious, and
would seem to show that the Council of State had some
doubts as to the precise meaning of the word Common-
wealth. They would have been more accurate, however, if
they had left out the word “Republique,” to which title
the Government of Venice had very small claim, less than
their own Government had :—
“That Sir Oliver Fleming do carry the letters from the
Parliament directed to the Republique of the Commonwealth
of Venice to the Secretary now here from that Common-
Wealth.” " . - -- .
The business of the Council of State extended to trans-
actions with all the Powers of the world. At this time
they had, besides their conferences with the ambassadors
of some Powers, correspondence by letters to carry on with
many others—with the Great Duke of Tuscany, with
“Jacobus Duke of Courland,” with the Archduke Leopold.”
Their mode of dealing with those personages may be seen
from the minute respecting a letter from the Duke of Wen-
dème, complaining of the destruction of his fleet by Blake
in September of this year. This minute is as follows:—
“The Council of State having, in pursuance of the Order
of Parliament in that behalf, taken into consideration the
Duke of Vendôme's letter, and the matter of fact of taking
the ships mentioned therein, do find the state of it to be,
That General Blake, being with the fleet, in the Narrows,
about the 5th of September last, part of the fleet, after
some hours’ chase, did take . . . [blank in orig.] French
men-of-war, being the King’s own ships, who, as the com-
mander said, were with several other ships going to the
relief of Dunkirk.”
that employment were signed and de- State, Tuesday, January 11, 1653,
livered to him. MS. State Paper Office.
* Order Book of the Council of * I'id. Thursday, January 6, 165%.
it.
1653.] ENGLISH CAPTIVES AT ALGIERS. 385
Whether any further explanation or satisfaction the
Council may have given in their letter I do not know, as,
though the “draught of a letter’ to the Duke of
Vendôme is said in the minute to be “annexed here-
unto,” “I have not been able to find any such draught.
But there is little doubt that the substance of the minute
given above formed the substance of the letter.
On the 11th of January 1653 letters were ordered to be
sent to the Vice-Admirals and Mayors of port towns, for the
impresting of seamen in their respective jurisdictions, for
the effectual manning of the fleet now to go forth ; and
the ships at Portsmouth and Plymouth and in the western
ports were ordered to cruise up and down in the Channel
for the discovery of the enemy.”
On the following day a letter, which shows in a striking
manner the extent to which the Barbary pirates carried on
their depredations, particularly in carrying Englishmen
into captivity, was written to “Mr. Longland, to acquaint
him that it is the opinion of this Council that, for the
furnishing of the English shipping in the Straits with
Englishmen, he do, by such vessels as he shall have occa-
sion from time to time to send to the African shore, bring
from Algiers some of the English captives; which the
Council conceive may now be effected upon the paying for
every man who shall be brought away the price of his
redemption; which the Council is informed is now set and
agreed upon.”
1 Order Book of the Council of State,
Tuesday, November 23, 1652, MS. State
Paper Office.
* Ibid. Tuesday, January 11, 165%.
* Ibid. Wednesday, January 12, 1653.
On the same day the Council made an
order, “That Mr. Thurloe do prepare
a paper to be brought into the Council,
VOL. II.
in pursuance of an Order of Parlia-
ment, whereby it may be signified to
the ambassadors and public ministers
now here, sent from foreign states and
princes to this Commonwealth, that
they are not to permit any of the
people of this Commonwealth to re-
sort to the hearing of Masse in their
C C
386
COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
I have repeatedly had occasion to call attention to the
sensitiveness of the Council of State on the subject of what
they termed “libellous and scurrilous books and pamph-
lets.” It is due to the memory of the statesmen who
composed that Council to state that their aversion to scur-
rility extended even to scurrility against their enemies, as
will appear from the following minute of 27th of January
1653:-
“That the printed paper this day brought into the
Council, containing scurrilous matter against the Dutch-
men, be referred to the Committee of the Council appointed
for putting in execution the late Act for regulating the
press; who are to cause enquiry to be made after the
author, printer, and publishers of the said paper, and also
Search to be made for them, and seizure of such of them as
can be found; and to report to the Council what they shall
do herein.” " -
An adequate conception cannot be obtained of the
labours of the Council of State without mentioning that a
vast number of petitions came in almost every day, which
necessarily occupied some part of their time. Many of
these petitions were from the widows who had lost their
husbands in the service of the State. All these petitions
received careful attention ; even when the Council could
do nothing for the petitioners, as in the following case:
scurrility had, however, the excuse
that it had been provoked by the
houses, it being contrary to the laws
of the nation.”—Order Book of the
Council of State, January 12, 1653,
MS. State Paper Office.
! Ibid. Thursday, January 27, 165%.
—Some specimens of the “scurrilous
matter” here referred to, matter
containing more scurrility than wit,
may be seen in the King's Pamphlets,
Anno 1652–3, Brit. Mus. The English
demeanour of the Dutch, who had
made bragging and scurrilous songs
of their own success in the war—
a success of which they had, in truth,
small cause to boast, since they owed
it to a superiority of force amounting
to three to one.
165%.] RELATIONs witH FoREIGN POWERS. 387
“Upon the reading of the petition of Susanna Cowling,
it is ordered that it be returned in answer to the said
petition, that the matter of the petition is not within the
cognizance of the Council.”' And yet Cromwell charged
this Council of State with neglect of their duty and delays
of business.
On Wednesday, the 19th of January, it was ordered:—
“That it be signified to the Commissioners for the Navy,
that the Council hold it fit that directions be by them
given to such as they employ under them as prest-masters,
that they do not for the future press out of any vessel
trading for coal to Newcastle, any man who is aged above
forty-five years, or any boy under the age of sixteen years, to
the end that that trade, which is so necessary to this Com-
monwealth, may be continued, and the ships in the service
of this Commonwealth be well and effectually manned.””
“That the paper in answer to the ambassadors from the
King of Spain and Duke Leopold be humbly reported to
the Parliament by Colonel Sydney.” "
I will give here several other minutes, throwing light
on the Parliament's relations with the Great Powers of
Europe at that time —
“That six thousand pounds be allowed unto the Lord
Wiscount Lisle ''
[Algernon Sydney’s elder brother],
1 Order Book of the Council of State,
Tuesday, January 18, 1653, MS. State
Paper Office.
* Ibid. Wednesday, January 19,
1653.
* Ibid. same day.—Such minutes
prove that Algernon Sydney did not
speak without authority when he said,
“All the states, kings, and potentates
of Europe most respectfully, not to
say submissively, sought our friend-
ship.”—Algernon Sydney on Govern-
ment, chap. ii. sect. 28. I may add
here another minute, showing the active
part taken by Sydney in the business
of the Council of State :- “That
Colonel Sydney, Mr. Strickland, Colonel
Purefoy, Sir H. Mildmay, or any two
of them, be desired to go out to treat
with the French agent, they being the
Commissioners formerly appointed to
that business.”—Order Book of the
Council of State, Thursday, February
10, 1653, MS. State Paper Office.
C C 2
==
º
388 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLANI). [CHAP. XV.
“nominated ambassador for Sweden, for his preparations,
journey, house-expenses, and all other Ordinary necessaries
for the space of six months; of which £3,000 be paid unto
him in money here, and the other three thousand to be sent
over by bills of exchange either to Stockholme, or Ham-
burgh, as shall appear most convenient ; and that £6,000
be set apart for that service by the Council out of the exi-
gents accordingly.” "
“That Mr. Thurloe do prepare the letter this day passed
in the Parliament to be sent to the Archduke, for the sig-
nature of Mr. Speaker; and that it be sent by Sir Oliver
Fleming to the Lord Ambassador of Spain, in order to be
sent to the Archduke Leopold.” ”
= =
* Order Book of the Council of State,
Monday, January 24, 1653, MS.
State Paper Office.—It appears, there-
fore, that Ludlow was in error when
he stated that at this time “The
Parliament sent the Lord-Commis-
sioner Whitelock on an extraordinary
embassy to the Crown of Sweden.”
— Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 439 :
2nd edition, London, 1721. But as it
would appear that Lord Wiscount
Lisle, though nominated, did not go,
probably in consequence of the change
in the English Government that took
place soon after, Ludlow might easily
confuse this appointment of Lord
Lisle with that of Whitelock by
Cromwell in less than a year after.
A story told by Whitelock, in his ac-
count of his embassy to Sweden, may
show that the English Parliament had
special reasons for nominating to that
appointment a man of the rank of the
Lord Wiscount Lisle. When White-
lock, after having had the honour of
dancing with Christina, the Queen of
Sweden, had conducted the Queen
to her chair of state, she said to him,
_*
“Par Dieu ! these Hollanders are
lying fellows.” “I wonder,” replied
Whitelock, “how the Hollanders
should come into your mind upon
such an occasion as this is, who are
not usually thought upon in such
solemnities, nor much acquainted with
them.” “I will tell you all,” replied
the Queen. “The Hollanders reported
to me a great while since, that all the
noblesse of England were of the King's
party, and none but mechanics of the
Parliament's party, and not agentleman
among them. Now I thought to try
you, and to shame, you if you could
not dance; but I see that you are a
gentleman, and have been bred a gen-
tleman; and that makes me say the
Bollanders are lying fellows, to report
that there was not a gentleman of the
Parliament's party, when I see by you
chiefly, and by many of your company,
that you are gentlemen.”—Whitelock's
Journal of his Swedish Embassy, vol.
ii. pp. 155, 156, 2 vols. London, 1772.
* Order Book of the Council of State,
Thursday, January 27, 1653, MS. State
Paper Office.
165%.] ORDERS RELATING TO THE FLEET. 389
“That the Commissioners of the Council appointed to
meet with the public minister from the King of France do
give a meeting unto him to-morrow, in the afternoon, at the
usual place in Whitehall. And Sir Oliver Fleming, Master
of the Ceremonies, is to give notice hereof unto him, and
to bring him to the place of meeting.”"
“That the members appointed to meet with the public
minister from the King of France, or any two of them, be
appointed to receive from the agent of the Prince of Condé
what he hath to offer.””
“That Sir Oliver Fleming, Master of the Ceremonies, do
carry to Seigneur Armerigo Salvetti, Resident with this
Commonwealth from the Great Duke of Tuscany, the letter
written from the Parliament to the Duke of Tuscany; and
he desired to transmit the same to the Duke, his master.”
“That the letter now read to the Duke of Venice be ap-
proved of and translated into Latin, and sent to the secre-
tary of that Commonwealth now here, in order to be sent
by him to Venice. And the Commissioners of the Council
appointed to treat with the said secretary are to represent
unto him the state of the business contained in the letter,
and to press him, on behalf of the merchants concerned,
that justice may be done unto them according to the desire
of the Council’s letter.” +
“That Mr. Thurloe do send a letter to the Mayor of
Gravesend, about sending in men to the fleet, according
as hath been sent to other Justices of the Peace to that
purpose.” " .
1 Order Book of the Council of State, * Ibid. Friday, January 28, 1653–
Friday, January 27, 1653, MS. State In the margin of this minute in the
Paper Office. Order Book is this marginal note, in
* Ibid. same day. Secretary Thurloe's hand (the minute
* Ibid. January 14, 1653. being in a clerk's hand, though a rough
* Ibid. Wednesday, February 2, draft written fast):—“Let a duplicate
1653. .*- of the former letter be writt.”
390 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
The minutes of the next meeting of the Council of
State (held on the following day, Saturday, the 29th of
January 1653), are all in Secretary Thurloe's hand—a hand
which persons more accustomed to read manuscript than
Tony Lumpkin might be excused for describing as a very
“cramp piece of penmanship.” At this meeting there
were eighteen members of the Council present."
At this meeting of the Council the following orders were
issued:— -
“That Mr. Scott be desired to make extracts of such
of the intelligence now read by him, as is fit for the
knowledge of the Generals of the fleet, and to send it unto
them.” ” *
“The Council, upon consideration of the whole business
now before them concerning the fleet, do think fit and
order that all the three Generals go forth to sea with the
fleet upon this present expedition.” ”
“That the Council doth declare and order, that there be
one secretary for the three Generals of the fleet, and that
the Commissioners of the Admiralty do allow him a suffi-
cient salary.”
“That Francis Harvey, late secretary to General Blake,
be not employed in the service of the fleet.” "
“That Captain Benjamin Blake be discharged from his
present command in the fleet, and that he be not employed,
nor go forth in the service.”"
Campbell, in his Life of Blake, places the supercession of
Benjamin Blake, the General’s brother, at the attack on
Santa Cruz, in 1657, on the authority of a work entitled
* Onlyſonday, 17th of the same month, MS. State Paper Office.
there were thirty members present.— * Ibid. same day.
Order Book of the Council of State, * Ibid. same day.
Monday, January 17, 1653. * Ibid. same day.
* Ibid. Saturday, January 29, 1653, * Ibid. Same day.
165%.] SOLDIERS SENT ON BOARD THE FLEET. 391
“Lives, English and Foreign.” And as Campbell has not
noticed this supercession in 1653, it is evident that he has
confounded this case of Benjamin Blake, in 1653, with
that of General Blake's brother Humphrey at the attack
on Santa Cruz in 1657. Benjamin Blake was in the
autumn of the following year (1654) appointed to the com-
mand of the Gloucester, in the fleet sent under Penn to the
West Indies; and there are good reasons for believing
that Benjamin Blake was not in his brother's fleet in
1657.1
On the 2nd of February 1653, the Council of State made
the following orders:—
“Upon consideration had of what hath been offered to
the Council from the Commissioners for the Admiralty,
for the better manning of the fleet now going forth to sea;
it is ordered, that 1,200 land-soldiers, besides officers, be
sent with all expedition to the fleet; wherein care is to be
taken that they be persons fitly qualified for that service,
according as it is propounded by the Commissioners of the
Admiralty.””
“That, for the rendering of the land-soldiers the more
serviceable when they shall come on shipboard, it is
ordered, that one sergeant and two corporals be appointed
to each sixty men; and that each soldier have the pay of
eighteen shillings per mensem, and his victuals; and the
officers to have their victuals, and also their pay as when
employed ashore—viz., for a sergeant, eighteen pence per
diem; and a corporal, twelve pence.” ” \.
1 Granville Penn's Memorials of
Admiral Sir William Penn, vol. i.
pp. 471, 472; London, 1833.
2 Order Book of the Council of
State, Wednesday night, February 2,
1654, MS. State Paper Office.—At this
meeting there were thirteen members
of the Council present, including the
Lord-General Cromwell.
* Ibid. same time.—It may be in-
ferred from this and the following
order, that no officers above the rank
of sergeants were to accompany the
“land-soldiers” aboard ship.
392 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
“That the aforesaid officers and soldiers now appointed
to go to the fleet are (when they shall come there) to per-
form, as far as they are able, all Service as seamen; and
to be ordered in the like capacity as the rest.” "
On Friday, the 4th of February 1653, the Council made
the following orders:–
“That Sir John Bourchier be desired to communicate
with the Lord-General the letter from Mr. Rymer of York,
informing of great robberies committed by companies of
armed men in that county; and to desire his Lordship
from this Council to give orders that some forces may be
appointed for the suppressing of them.”” -
“That the intelligence this night received, contained in
three letters, concerning the state and condition of the
Dutch fleet, be sent to the Generals of the fleet.” "
“That the order made by the Commissioners of the
Admiralty, concerning the entertainment of midshipmen
on board the several ships for the year ensuing, in such
manner as in the said order is expressed, be approved of.”
When the following order was made, on Wednesday, the
9th of February, there were twenty-four members present
at the Council, including the Lord-General [Cromwell], Sir
Henry Vane, and Colonel Sydney [Algernon Sydney] —
“That the regiment of the Lord-General, out of which
500 men have been taken for the supplying of the fleet,
be recruited to the former numbers. And that the Lord-
General be desired to give order to his officers for the re-
cruiting of his regiment accordingly.” " t
On Friday, the 11th of February, the following order
was made — -
- 1 Order Book of the Council of State, * Ibid. same day.
Wednesday night, February 2, 165%, * Ibid. same day.
MS. State Paper Office. * Ibid. Wednesday, February 9,
Ibid. Friday, February 4, 165%. 165%.
1653.]. CROMWELL AND THE COUNCIL OF STATE. 393
“That the Lord-General [Cromwell], Colonel Purefoy,
Mr. Bond, Sir Henry Mildmay, Major-General Harrison,
Mr. Strickland, Mr. Scot, Colonel Sydney, and Mr. Gurdon,
or any four of them, be appointed a Committee, to go forth
and confer with Mr. Douglas, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Smith,
and Mr. Kerr, ministers of the Scottish nation, to receive
from them what they shall say by way of explanation upon
what they have already spoken to the Council, concerning
their engagement to live peaceably and inoffensively in
Scotland, as becomes the ministers of the Gospel.” "
The result of this conference is shown by the following
minute, made at a meeting of the Council on the evening
of the same day, at which there were fourteen members
present, including the Lord-General, Mr. Scot, Colonel
Purefoy, and Mr. Gurdon. Sydney was not there:—
“That Mr. Robert Douglas and Mr. James Hamilton,
prisoners in the Tower of London, be discharged from
their imprisonment, and be at their full liberty.””
Now these minutes of 9th and 11th of February prove
that Cromwell was acting, even so late as within a few
weeks of his turning round upon them, as the (to all ap-
pearance) sincere friend and colleague of Vane, Scot, and
Sydney. They also prove that Cromwell performed his part
of the business of government, as a member of the admin-
istrative council, though not as dictator or sole ruler. If
it could be shown that any attempts were made by the other
members of the Council of State to deprive Cromwell of
his legitimate voice and vote as a member of the Council
of State, there might be some colour for what his son
Henry Cromwell afterwards said to Ludlow in Ireland.
| Order Book of the Council of State, 11, 1653. Marginal note in another
Friday, February 11, 1653, MS. State hand:—“Send this warrant to the
Paper Office. - Lord Bradshaw this night, who will
* Ibid. Friday, at night, February take care of it.”
394 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
Ludlow having made this remark, that “ his [Cromwell's]
power [as Lord-General and member of the Council of
State] was as great, and his wealth as much, as any rational
man could wish to procure to himself, without raising
envy and trouble,” Henry Cromwell replied:— “You
that are here may think he had power, but they made
a very kickshaw of him at London.”" This, as Ludlow
observes, was in fact to “acknowledge the ambition of
his father.” For, if the Government were to be by a
Parliament and a Council of State, the Council of State
being the Executive, it will be seen, from many of the
minutes I have transcribed, that their Lord-General or
Commander-in-Chief had no reason to complain of any
undue interference with his particular department; that
in all matters relating to the employment of the military
forces, they acted through the Lord-General—their form
of words being, “That the Lord-General be communicated
with ”—“That the letter be referred to the Committee, who
are to confer with the Lord-General, and report their
opinions to the Council,”—“That his Lordship be desired
from this Council to give orders,” &c. This indeed was
not a military despotism; and it seems it was a military
despotism that Cromwell desired, that is, provided that he
was the despot. In fact, so far was the Council of State
from making “a kickshaw of him,” that they favoured
him only too much. While the pay of the rest of the
army was often kept many months in arrear, we find, from
such minutes as the following, that they paid special at-
tention to the payment of “the Lord-General’s regiment’”
—a regiment which made a return for such good treatment
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. fenders. Many arguments might be
491 : 2nd edition, London, 1721.-It found in defence of Caesar and Bona-
is astonishing, indeed, that Cromwell's parte, which do not apply in the least
conduct should ever have found de- to the case of Cromwell.
165%.] BATTLE OF PORTLAND. 395
by the most disgraceful act ever committed by English
soldiers:— -
“That a letter be written to the Committee for the
Army, to desire them that the two months’ pay, due to
the Lord-General’s regiment on Saturday last, according
to the muster of 1,200 men, may be speedily paid.”"
It appears from a petition of the Levant merchants to
the Council of State that several of their ships returning
from Turkey were obliged, for their security from the
Dutch men-of-war in the Mediterranean, to put into har-
bour upon the coast of Italy, where they landed all their
silks and fine goods. They were then taken into the
service of the State, the English Government being in
want of ships of war in the Mediterranean. For which
reason, and “in regard of the present dangerousness of
those seas by the Dutch,” the petitioners prayed that
they, bringing their goods overland to Dunquerque, might
“ have liberty to import them thence to England, without
seizure or penalty imposed by the Act of Parliament for
encouragement of navigation: ” “ordered, that the case
be humbly reported to the Parliament,” ” which amounted
to granting the prayer of the petition.
It had now become evident that a great battle must be
fought with the Dutch fleet before many days passed.
On the 15th of February, 1653, the Council ordered:—
“That new warrants be drawn for all the messengers of
1 Order Book of the Council of
State, Thursday, February 10, 1653,
MS. State Paper Office.—On the same
day the Council ordered, “That the
sum of £200 be paid out of the exi-
gent moneys of the Council to Mr.
Marchmont Needham, in consideration
of his great labour and pains in the
translation of Mr. Selden's book en-
titled ‘Mare Clausum.’”—Ibid. same
day.
* Ibid. same day.—The Order of
Parliament, giving power to the Coun-
cil according to the prayer of the
petition, is, by a minute of March 14,
referred to the Committee for Foreign
Affairs.
396 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP, XV.
the Council, for the enabling them to ride post, to press
horses upon all roads, and also any fit vessel in any port
they shall come unto, whither they are directed, in order
to sail towards the fleet.”"
On Sunday the 20th of February, the Council received
a despatch from the fleet, the importance of which is shown
by this order:-‘‘That £10 be given to Mr. Symball, for
his diligence in bringing a despatch from the fleet.”
On that Sunday there were fourteen members of the
Council present, including Wane and Scot. Bradshaw
was president. Cromwell was not present; neither was
Sydney. Vane was on that day evidently the directing
spirit of the Council, as appears from the following orders,
which formed the business of that day :—
“That it be referred to the Commissioners of the
Admiralty to speak with the Lord-General [Cromwell],
concerning putting aboard the fleet 1,200 or 1,500 land-
soldiers, upon the same terms as the other land-soldiers
were sent, and to give orders therein accordingly.” "
“That a letter be written to the Commissioners of the
Navy, to let them know the necessity of having the ships
now fitting forth completely ready by the 1st of March;
and, therefore, that they take care of supplying them with
all things necessary, and especially with men.” “
On the following day, Monday, the 21st of February
1653, an order was made :- |
“That the Council do sit to-morrow morning at 8 of the
1 Order Book of the Council of
State, Tuesday, February 15, 165%,
MS. State Paper Office.
* Ibid. Sunday, February 20, 1653–
On March 2, there is another order
respecting the payment of this mes-
senger: “That the sum of £20 be
paid to Henry Symball, messenger, in
pursuance of an Order of Parliament,
for bringing the letter from the Gene-
rals of the fleet, containing an account
of the late action against the Dutch.”
—Ibid. Wednesday, March 2, 1653.
* Ibid. Same day.
* Ibid. Same day.
1653.] FIRST DAY'S BATTLE, 397
clock; and that Mr. Thurloe do by that time make extracts
of the intelligence sent to the Council, of the late fight with
the Dutch, in order to report the same to the Parliament.”"
On Tuesday, the 22nd of February, the following orders
were made :-
“That the sum of £5 be paid to Edward Proctor, water-
man, in consideration of his bringing a pacquet of good
news to the Commissioners for the Admiralty.””
“That it be recommended to the Commissioners for the
Admiralty to take care that physicians and chirurgeons
may be forthwith despatched to Dover and Portsmouth, to
take care of the sick and wounded men there.” ”
“That Sir Henry Vane do humbly acquaint the Parlia-
ment with the intelligence come concerning the late
engagement with the Dutch.” “
“That Sir Henry Vane do humbly move the Parliament
to take into consideration the families of such as have
been slain in the engagement with the Dutch, some
whereof are already known, and further particulars ex-
pected every hour.””
On the 18th, the 19th, and the 20th of February, 1653,
was fought the greatest battle that had yet been fought
between the English and the Dutch fleets, which were
about equal in the number of ships, each fleet consisting
of about 80 line-of-battle ships and frigates. The best
and largest ships of the two nations, commanded by the
best admirals that the world had ever seen—on the Dutch
side by Tromp, De Ruyter, Evertz, Floritz, De Wilde, on
the English side by Blake, Deane, Penn, Lawson—were
engaged. On board of the English fleet were also many
Order Book of the Council of State, * Ibid. same day.
Monday, February 21, 1653, MS. State * Ibid. same day.
Paper Office. * Ibid. Same day.
* Ibid. Tuesday, February 22, 1653.
398 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
hundreds of the veteran soldiers of the Parliamentary army,
men who had passed through a thousand dangers, and had
been victorious in a hundred battles and sieges.
Early in the morning of the 18th of February, the
English fleet being in that part of the English Channel
between the Isle of Portland and Cape de la Hogue, and
some five leagues distant from the English shore, the
English admirals descried the Dutch fleet, consisting—“as
we then judged,” say the English admirals' in their letter
to the Speaker, “and are since informed by some of their
own number—of 80, all men-of-war, and some 200 °
merchantmen,” a league and a half to windward of the
weathermost of their ships, and two or three leagues to
windward of most of the English fleet.
Blake's ship, the Triumph, with the Fairfaa (Rear-
Admiral Lawson), the Speaker (Vice-Admiral Penn), and
about twenty more ships, being nearest to the Dutch,
Tromp “might probably,” says the despatch of the English
admirals, “if he had pleased to have kept the wind, have
gone away with his whole fleet, and we had not been able
to have reached him with our main body, only with a few
frigates, our best sailers, which had not been likely to
have done much upon them.” ” But Tromp, seeing that
the main body of the English fleet was about a league and
\ .
* Blake, Deane, and Monk to the
Speaker, February 27, 165%, in Old
Parliamentary History, vol. xx. p. 116.
* The Dutch writer of the “Life of
Cornelius Van Tromp” states the mer-
chantmen at 250. He says: “Lieu-
tenant-Admiral Tromp, after he had
cruised some time in the Channel, to
wait for the ships that were to come
from Holland, arrived, at the begin-
ning of February, near the isle of
Rhée, to convoy 250 merchant-ships
that were there assembled from divers
parts of Europe; and after having
staid there seven days, he set out
with that fleet to conduct them home
to their own country. But as he came
near Portland, he descried the English
fleet under the command of Blake,
upon which he stood directly towards
them.”—Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
p. 89. $.
* Blake, Deane, and Monk to the
Speaker, February 27, 1653.
165%.] SECOND DAY'S BATTLE, 399
a half distant, at once perceived the advantage this pre-
sented to him, of attacking with a greatly superior force
these twenty-three ships, forming hardly more than a
fourth part of the English fleet. Accordingly, he put all
his merchantmen to windward, and ordered them to stay
there—“as some that we have taken have since informed
us,” say the English admirals'—“ and himself, with his
body of men-of-war, drew down upon us that were the
weathermost ships, when we were in a short time engaged.”
Nothing could more strikingly manifest the extraordi-
nary fighting qualities of the Englishmen who manned
those twenty-three ships, than the fact that those ships
fought the whole Dutch fleet for two hours,” without that
result which, under such circumstances, Lord Rodney pro-
nounced inevitable, when he said that the officer who
brings the whole fleet under his command to attack half
or part of the enemy, will be sure of defeating the enemy
and taking the part attacked. Tromp, indeed, did take
several of the English ships in this first encounter. The
English admirals, in their despatch to the Speaker, mention
three by name, “and some other ships, but,” they add,
“we repossessed them again.”
But if the Dutch had pretty hard work even with those
twenty-three ships, as the rest of the English fleet came
up, and “ had got so far ahead, that, by tacking, they
could weather the greatest part of the Dutch fleet,” Tromp
perceived that the tables were turned against him, and,
1 Blake, Deane, and Monk to the tence brought in afterwards throws a
Speaker, February 27, 1653. different light on the matter : “The
* The want of clearness in the de- leewardmost part of our ships con-
spatch might make it, at first sight, tinued fighting till night separated
appear that these twenty-three ships them, being engaged within two hours
fought the whole Dutch fleet till 4 as soon as we.”
o'clock in the afternoon. But a sen-
COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
accordingly, “he tacked likewise, and those with him,
and left us.”” :
On the 19th of February, as soon as it was day, the Eng-
lish fleet made what sail they could after the Dutch, but, it
being calm, the main body of the English could not get up
with the Dutch till 2 o’clock. The two fleets then fought
till night parted them. The English this day took and
destroyed five of the Dutch men-of-war. “The Dutch
fleet steered up the Channel with their lights abroad; we
followed; the wind at WNW., a fine little gale all night.”
The account of the English admirals agrees in the main
points with the description given by foreigners of this
battle. Paul Hoste, in his work on Naval Evolutions,
says that in this battle, which he calls the “Combat de
Portland,” the two fleets met in sight of Portland; that the
Dutch had the wind; that Tromp, though it appeared that
he ought to avoid a battle in which he should hazard his
convoy of 200 merchantmen, yet, considering that if the
wind should change, he would be obliged to fight with less
advantage, resolved to bear down on the enemy, after
having placed his convoy to windward; that the battle on
the first day was very sanguinary, many ships being dis-
abled, sunk, or fired; that nothing was able to separate
two enemies so furiously excited, but the darkness of the
night, during which both parties prepared themselves to
renew the combat, which had remained undecided. Hoste
then says, that on the second day, Admiral Tromp found
himself exceedingly perplexed; and, after many delibera-
tions, he determined to retreat.”
| Blake, Deane, and Monk to the Paul Hoste, Professeur de Mathéma-
Speaker, February 27,165%. tiques dans le Séminaire Royale de
* Ibid]. Toulon. A Lyon. Fol. 1696 and 1727, p.
* Art des Armées Navales; ou Traité 90. Granville Penn, vol. i. pp. 481–
des Evolutions Navales. Par le Père 484. -
1653.] º THIRD DAY'S BATTLE. 401
Accordingly, on the third day, Tromp drew up his fleet
in the form of a half-moon or semicircle; and, as a hen
covers her chickens with her wings, the Dutch admiral
put his convoy of 200 merchantmen richly laden in the
middle—that is, within the semicircle composed of his
men-of-war, his own ship occupying the post of danger and
honour; for his own ship formed to windward the ex-
treme point of the semicircle, and the rest of his fleet
extended on each side to form the segments of the semi-
circle which covered the convoy. In this order he re-
treated with the wind astern, firing to the right and left
On all the English ships that approached to insult his
wings. Tromp continued to fight till night, which gave
him time to renew his order of retreat; and Hoste says,
that though pursued the following day by the English, he
entered his ports “with the glory of having, by his valour
and skill, preserved for his country a rich convoy which
was on the point of becoming a prey of the enemy.”
How far this last statement is correct, may be judged
by the despatch of the English admirals, which thus
proceeds:—
“On the 20th, about nine in the morning, we fell close
in with them, with some fine great ships, and all the
frigates of strength, though very many could not come up
that day. And seeing their men-of-war somewhat weak-
ened, we sent smaller frigates, and ships of less force, that
could get up amongst the merchantmen, which put their
whole body to a very great trouble, so that many of them
and their men-of-war began to break off from their main
body; and towards evening we pressed so hard upon them,
that they turned their merchantmen out of their fleet upon
us (as is conceived), for a bait; but we gave strict order,
that none of our ships that could get up to their men-of-
WOL. II. T) D
402 commonwealTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
war, and had force, should meddle with any merchantmen,
but leave them to the rear. We continued still fighting
with them until the dusk of the evening, by which time
we were some three-and-a-half leagues off Blackness," in
France (four leagues W. from Calais), the wind at N.W.;
we steering directly for the point of land, having the wind
of the Dutch fleet. So that if it had pleased the Lord, in
His wise providence, who sets bounds to the sea, and over-
rules the ways and actions of men, that it had been but
three hours longer to-night, we had probably made an in-
terposition between them and home; whereby they might
have been obliged to have made their way through us with
their men-of-war, which at this time were not thirty-five,
as we could count—the rest being destroyed or dispersed.
The merchantmen, also, must have been necessitated to
have run ashore, or fallen into our hands; which, as we
conceive, the Dutch admiral being sensible of, just as it
was dark, bore directly in upon the shore, where, it is
supposed, he anchored ; the tide of ebb being then come,
which was a leewardly tide. We consulted with our pilots,
and men knowing those coasts, what it was possible for
the enemy to do? Whose opinions were, that he could
not weather the French shore, as the tide and wind then
was, to get home; and that we must likewise anchor, or
we could not be able to carry it about the flats of the
Somme; whereupon we anchored, Blackness being N.E.
and by E., three leagues from us.
“This night being very dark, and blowing hard, the
Dutch got away from us; so that, in the morning of the
21st, we could not discover one ship more than our own,
which were betwixt forty and fifty, the rest being scattered,
| Cap Gris Nez, opposite to Dungeness.
165%.] RESULTS OF THE BATTLE OF PORTLAND. 403
and as many prizes as made up sixty in all. We spent all
this night and day, while ſtill] twelve o’clock, in fitting of
our ships, masts, and sails, for we were not capable to stir
till they were repaired; at which time, being a windward
tide, and the Dutch fleet gone, we weighed and stood over
to the English shore, fearing to stay longer upon the coast,
being a lee-shore.”
The despatch thus concludes:—
“Thus you see how it hath pleased the Lord to deal
with us, poor unworthy instruments, employed in this late
transaction; wherein He hath delivered into our hands
some seventeen or eighteen of their ships of war, which
have been by your fleet (without the loss of any one ship
save the Sampson) taken and destroyed; besides merchant-
men, whose numbers we know not, they being scattered to
several ports.
“We have many men wounded, and divers, both of
honesty and worth, slain.
- (Subscribed) Rob ERT BLAKE,
RICHARD DEANE,
GEORGE MONK.”
“P.S.–Several of the Dutch are driven ashore in
France, one without any men at all in her.” "
In this Battle of Portland, Blake himself was wounded,
some accounts say severely, others slightly. Lord Lei-
cester in his Journal says, “General Blake was hurt in
the thigh with a crossbow-shot.” Another cotemporary
account says, “General Blake was slightly wounded in the
neck at Portland fight.” ” Lord Leicester says, “Wan
| Blake, Deane, and Monk to the * Sydney Papers, edited by R. W.
speaker, aboard the Triumph in Stokes Blencowe, p. 139: London, 1825.
Bay, February 27, 165%, in Old Parl. * Granville Penn, vol. ii. p. 615,
Hist, vol. xx, p. 116 et Seq. Appendix M.
D D 2
404 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV
Tromp got home into Holland with some of his men-of-
war, leaving all his merchants which he was to convoy,
many whereof fell daily into the hands of the English. It
is said the Hollanders lost 4,000 men, the English not
above 400.” But the loss on both sides was probably
much greater than this. In another letter the General of
the fleet says, “The loss on our side is greater than was
expected, for we have lost many precious commanders,
besides many wounded—some having lost their legs, and
others their arms.” Among the slain were Captains Ball,
Mildmay, and Barker, “with our secretary Mr. Sparrow,
whose deaths are much lamented.””
On the 24th of February, the Council of State ordered
a letter of thanks to be written to the Generals of the
fleet.8 -
Whatever was the nature or severity of Blake’s wound,
it would appear that soon after the battle he was suffering
from an illness which alarmed the Council of State; for
on Sunday, the 6th of March, the Order Book contains
the following minute, which is the only minute made on
that day. The minute is headed, “Lord’s Day, 6th March,
1653,” and is as follows: “Whereas it is just now sig-
nified to the Council, that General Blake is fallen very ill
at Portsmouth, It is ordered that Colonel Walton and
Mr. Scot be desired to speak with Dr. Pridean and Dr.
Bates; and to desire them, in the name of the Council, to
take a journey to Portsmouth to contribute their advice
and assistance for the restoring of him to health again, if
the Lord please; and to desire them to go away this night,
to which end the Council have given order for a coach
* Sydney Papers, p. 139: London, 480, 481.
1825. * Order Book of the Council of
* King's Pamphlets, No. 555, Brit. State, Thursday, February 24, 1653,
Mus. Granville Penn, vol. i. pp. 479, MS. State Paper Office.
165%.] EFFECT OF THE GREAT BATTLE. 405
and six horses to be made ready, and a messenger to
attend them for defraying the charge of their journey.” "
On Monday, the 14th of March, there is the following
order relating to the same matter: “That fifty pounds
apiece be paid, out of the exigent moneys of the Council,
to Dr. Pridean and Dr. Bates, in consideration of their
pains in their journey to visit General Blake at Portsmouth,
by the order and at the desire of the Council.””
On Wednesday the 16th of March, the Council made the
following order, with a view to remedy the want of men to
man the fleet, arising from the “great number of private
men-of-war,” to which Blake had called their attentionin his
despatch of December 1, 1652, quoted in a former page:–
“That a letter be written to the Generals of the fleet, to
let them know that the Council have put a stop to the
granting of any more commissions for private men-of-war,
unless they shall be certified of the supply of the fleet
with men; and do give power unto them, for the speedy
manning of the fleet, to take men out of the private men-
of-war as they shall meet with them, and as they shall find
they shall stand in need of them.” "
To enable the reader to judge of the effect of this great
battle at the time, I will quote a passage from a cotem-
porary Dutch writer, whose efforts to prove that the
Hollanders “had not much less right to pretend to the
victory than their enemies,” only confirm the truth of the
English claim to the victory:—“The success of this battle
made so great a noise at London, that they made no diffi-
culty to publish abroad that Tromp, Evertz, and De
Ruyter were totally routed, and that 100 merchant-ships,
* Order Book of the Council of State, * Ibid. Monday, March 14, 165%.
Lord's Day, March 6, 1653, MS. State * Ibid. Wednesday, March 16, 165%.
Paper Office.
406 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XV.
and fifty men-of-war, of the Dutch were taken or sunk.
Nay, and this noise was echoed over all Europe, and was
carried into France, Sweedland, Denmark; and to render
what they affected to speak of it the more credible, the
Parliament appointed an extraordinary thanksgiving-day
to be kept on that occasion. And what seemed fully to
authorise so great a triumph, and exalt the glory of Blake,
was, that the prisoners were led in a drove to Canterbury,
under the guard of a troop of horse; and that in all the
places through which they passed, they rang the bells,
thereby to make that defeat to appear the more signal and
incontestable; though the Dutch at the same time no less
confidently pretended ” [this word “pretended,” used by a
Dutch writer, is very significant] “that the action did not
pass altogether so much to the advantage of the English,
that they ought to have attributed to themselves all the
glory of it, since, say they” [i.e. the Dutch), “excepting
the merchant-ships that fell into their hands, the Hollanders
had not much less right to pretend to the victory than
their enemies.” "
The English Royalist party rejoiced at any symptom
of disaster to the Parliament of England, and affected to
disbelieve their successes. Hyde wrote thus, on the
20th of March, 1653, to Secretary Nicholas in Holland:
“We do here (Paris), notwithstanding all their brags
in England of their victory, believe the Dutch to have
absolutely the best of it.” And this patriotic English-
man’s joy was unbounded because Blake was unable with
thirty-seven ships, some of them commanded by captains
who were traitors to the Parliament, to contend successfully
against a Dutch fleet of ninety-five ships. On the 14th of
December, 1652, he thus wrote to Nicholas : “We are in
* Life of Cornelius Van Tromp, pp. 104, 105: London, 1697.
165%.] BLAKE'S EXPLOITS IN TEN MONTHS. 407
great hope that this notable fight at sea, in which the Hol-
landers have so thoroughly banged the rebels, will make a
great alterátion in the counsels with you and here. It is the
first signal overthrow those devilish rebels have sustained,
either at sea or land; and therefore must make a deep
impression upon the spirits of the common people of
England, who have hitherto been transported by their in-
credible successes.” Hyde hoped to bring back by foreign
arms.the Stuarts, and himself with them, upon the people
of England. But all the naval and military power of all
the world would have been powerless to do that, but for
the “self in the highest” policy of Cromwell.
The fame of the English admiral filled all the world.
The testimony of his friend and cotemporary, Algernon
Sydney, is fully borne out by that of his enemy and co-
temporary, Clarendon, and confirmed by the verdict in after-
times of men most hostile to his cause—of Samuel Johnson
and David Hume. “The reputation and power of our
nation,” says Algernon Sydney, “ rose to a greater height
than when we possessed the better half of France, and the
Kings of France and Scotland were our prisoners. All the
states, kings, and potentates of Europe most respectfully,
not to say submissively, sought our friendship ; and Rome
was more afraid of Blake, and his fleet, than they had been
of the great King of Sweden, when he was ready to in-
vade Italy with a hundred thousand men.” Even according
* Algernon Sydney on Government, together in some of these parts (from
chap. ii. sect. 28.—Algernon Sydney Dunkirk to Ostend), hath struck a very
was a member of the Council of State greatterror into most hearts; insomuch,
when Blake fought the great Battle of that the most judicious amongst them
Portland. A letter in Thurloe, after do begin to consider, in case these two
giving an account of the subsequent mighty potentates should join together,
great battle in June, thus proceeds: what would become of the kings of the
“The very noise of the guns, which earth. Doubtless Babylon is upon her
was heard very plain for three days fall !”—Thurloe, vol. i. pp. 272, 273.
408 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP XV.
to the testimony of the Dutch themselves, “the noise of this
battle was echoed over all Europe, and was carried into
Erance, Sweden, Denmark.” "
The exploits of Fairfax and Cromwell sink into insig-
nificance beside those of Blake. Indeed, we should find
it difficult to discover any equal portion of the lives of
the greatest names in war—of Nelson, of Hannibal, of
Caesar, of Frederic, of Napoleon—so full of great achieve-
ments as this short period, perhaps the most brilliant in
the history of England. Within the space of ten months,
besides minor exploits, such as the destruction of the
French fleet under the Duke of Vendôme, Blake fought
four great pitched battles against the greatest naval
armaments commanded by the greatest admirals the
world had ever seen. Three of these battles he won;
the defeat in the fourth battle, where Blake maintained for
many hours with thirty-seven ships a fight against ninety-
five, commanded by Tromp, tended rather to raise than
lower his naval renown.”
* Life of Cornelius Van Tromp,
p. 104.
* In reference to the opinion that,
with such a disproportion of force as
thirty-seven ships to ninety-five or one
hundred, Blake ought to have declined
an engagement, Dr. Johnson says:
“We must then admit, amidst our
eulogies and applauses, that the great,
the wise, and the valiant Blake was
once betrayed to an inconsiderate and
desperate enterprise by the resistless
ardour of his own spirit, and a noble
jealousy for the honour of his country.”
—Life of Blake, Johnson's Works,
vol. xii. p. 52. Dr. Johnson, in re-
ference to the remark of Rapin that the
Dutch and Spaniards sustained a great
loss of ships, money, men, and mer-
chandise, while the English gained
nothing but glory, says truly, “As if
he that increases the military reputa-
tion of a people did not increase their
power, and he that weakens his enemy
in effect strengthens himself.”—Ibid.
vol. xii. p. 59.
CHAPTER XVI.
“Vewilla regis prodeunt inferni verso di noi: ” the Pro-
tector's colours loom in the distance, spread out by the
wind, and bearing, in great golden characters, the word
That one word upon that flag was indeed a
talisman more potent, an ensign more formidable, a sym-
bol of success and victory more sure, more unvarying, more
infallible, than the image of any beast or bird, ancient or
modern—lion, tiger, leopard, or eagle, whether with two
heads or one. For there have been times when the most for-
tunate and victorious of those have met with reverse and
disaster. But who can tell the time when that banner of
Emmanuel was borne backward in battle, and beheld either
in captivity or flight?” God with us!" What a history of
Emmanuel !
* Dante's Inferno, canto xxxiv. moirs, vol. ii. p. 496: 2nd edition,
vv. 1, 2.
* It is to be observed that those
troops lost their character of invinci-
bility after Cromwell had expelled the
IParliament. General Ludlow thus
accounts for the result of the expedi-
tion against Hispaniola : “Those very
men, who, when they fought for the
liberties of their country, had per-
formed wonders, having now engaged
to support the late-erected tyranny,
disgracefully fled when there was
none to pursue them.”—Ludlow's Me-
London, 1721.
* “That the inscriptions which are
to be put on the coin of England shall
be written in the English tongue. That
the inscriptions shall be these : viz., on
the side on which the English arms do
standalone, this, THE COMMONWEALTH
of ENGLAND; on the other side, which
bears the arms of England and Ire-
land, GoD WITH Us.”—Order Book of
the Council of State, April 24, 1649,
MS. State Paper Office.
410 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
resistless energy—of toils endured, of dangers encountered,
of fields fought and won, of towns taken by assault, of
hostile armies annihilated—is written in these three magic
words! More than sixty years after the great leader of
those who had marched under those colours had fought
his last fight, and been carried to his grave—not indeed
his last resting-place, for those who came after him were
not ashamed to violate even the sanctities of the tomb, and
to do outrage and insult to the bones of the dead enemy
before whose living face they had so often fled—a very
ancient laird declared to an English officer of engineers,
quartered at Inverness, that “Oliver’s colours were so
strongly impressed on his memory, that he thought he
then saw them spread out by the wind, with the word
Emmanuel (God with us) upon them, in very large golden
characters.” "
No wonder that a halo should encircle the name of the
chief of those who had carried those colours to so many
victories, and should so dazzle the imagination as to per-
vert the judgment. Nevertheless, though they are not to
be met with in any great abundance, there are still men in
1 “Oliver had 1,200 men in and edition: London, 1815. Sir Walter
near this citadel [Inverness], under
the command of one Colonel Fitz, who
had been a tailor, as I have been in-
formed by a very ancient laird, who
said he remembered every remarkable
passage which happened at that time,
and, most especially, Oliver's colours,
which were so strongly impressed on
his memory, that he thought he then
saw them spread out by the wind, with
the word Emmanuel (God with us)
upon them, in very large golden
characters.”—Burt's Letters from the
North of Scotland, vol. i. p. 217 : new
Scott, in one of his notes to his edi-
tion of Dryden's Works (vol. ix. p.
20), in which he refers to the above
passage, and to the writer of it as
“an officer of engineers quartered at
Inverness shortly after 1720,” says:
“The garrisons established by Crom-
well upon the skirts and in the passes
of the Highlands, restrained the pre-
datory clans, and taught them, in no
gentle manner, that respect for the
property of their Lowland neighbours,
which their lawful monarchs had vainly
endeavoured to inculcate.”
1652.] THE WORSHIPPERS OF SUCCESS, 411
the world whose words can be relied on, whose idol is not
“self in the highest,” and who (to borrow the words in-
scribed on the tomb of one known to me in days long gone
by), sustain the honour of their country by deeds of bravery
and devotion, and the honour of human nature by an un-
selfish life, and by benevolence never weary of well-doing.
There were such men then, though the number of them
might not be great. While the worshippers of its de-
stroyer shower reproaches upon the broken faction, others
can remember that it contained men who were willing to
die, and who did die, for that cause which, in their last
words on the scaffold, they called “a cause not to be re-
pented of,” “a cause which gave life in death to all the
owners of it and sufferers for it.” When the members of
a legislature have been expelled from their House by armed
men, even though they have not been sent off in the felon’s
van, the worshippers of success in all its shapes step for-
ward, and pour forth the vials of their scorn upon “such
a shattered thing; ” “ and hang it up on the gibbet of
their eloquence as an object for the contempt and derision
of mankind. Then the man who, when “faith was broken
and somewhat else,” “ turns suddenly round upon his
ancient friends and comrades, and to-day concentrates in
his single person all those powers of sovereignty which but
yesterday had been theirs, becomes a man-god, with slaves
for worshippers; and they become “a small faction of
fanatical egotists, uniting to the love of power and the
fanaticism of opinions all the ridicule of helplessness, and
the infatuation of pretended legitimacy.” Is it really so,
O Devilsdust 1 worshipper of the evil spirit, and kneeler
| The last words of Thomas Scot. * Words also of Thomas Scot,
* Some of the last words of Sir * Words of Thomas Scot,
Henry Vane.
412 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
before the burning throne? Something has been seen al-
ready from those men’s acts and deeds in answer to this
question. Let us now look a little farther, and try if we
can see anything more.
I have said in a former page' that Cromwell “gradually
enveloped the men who sat and talked at Westminster in
net within net, like so many flies in the widespread and
powerful web of a huge and active spider.” I will now
show, on evidence which has never been produced before,
that I did not use these words without sufficient authority.
The following minute, made the very day after Cromwell’s
meeting with some members of Parliament and chief
officers of the army at the Speaker’s house, namely on
Thursday, the 11th of December, 1651, looms like the
terrible shadow of the future, and shows that Cromwell
was beginning then to draw his nets closer around his
prey:-
“That it be referred to the Committee for the Affairs of
Ireland and Scotland, to consider where quarters are to be
had for the regiment of foot of the Lord-General, which
is ordered to the guard of the Parliament; and to take care
that the captain of the guard may be spoken to, that full
and sufficient guards may be placed in Whitehall (espe-
cially in the night), upon all the gates entering into the
House, and upon most of the principal passages within the
EIOuse.” ” -
Now let it be observed, that all the time, several years,
that Fairfax was Lord-General, and even all the time that
Cromwell was Lord-General—he succeeded Fairfax on the
26th of June, 1650—there had been discovered no need for
appointing the Lord-General’s own regiment of foot as
1 Vol. I. p. 160. State, Thursday, December 11, 1651,
* Order Book of the Council of MS. State Paper Office.
1652.] . PAY OF THE PARLIAMENTARY ARMY. 413
the guard of the Parliament. There was no need for the
change now. The Parliament and the Council of State
had been very sufficiently guarded hitherto by Colonel
Berkstead’s regiment. And setting the Lord-General
Cromwell’s regiment of foot to guard the Parliament, was
neither more nor less than setting the wolf to guard the
sheep. But this was not all. On the 25th of the same
month, just a fortnight after the order last quoted, the
following order was made :-
“That twelve pence a day be allowed to the soldiers of
the two regiments appointed for the guards of the Par-
liament and city, to be paid out of the Lord-General’s
contingencies.” " -
It here becomes necessary to ascertain, as far as possible,
the pay of the army of the Parliament:—
“Die Sabbati, Januarii 1.1°, 1644.—The House, ac-
cording to the Order yesterday made, took into considera-
tion their armies, and proceeded first into the consideration
of the New Model.”
% + X- + 3% +
“Resolved &c. that each trooper shall receive 2s. per diem
for his entertainment.””
Neither the dragoons’ nor the foot-soldiers’ pay is men-
tioned. But it may be inferred, from a minute of the
Council of State of the 11th of May 1649, which states
“that three private soldiers of Colonel Pride’s regiment
were taken to attend Dr. Dorislaus to Holland, and agree-
ment made they should each of them have 5s. per week,
besides a gratuity at their return,” “that the pay of the
foot-soldiers was about 6d. a day. For it may be con-
1 Order Book of the Council of State, Januarii 119, 1644.
Thursday, December 25, 1651, MS. * Order Book of the Council of
State Paper Office. State, May 11, 1649, MS. State Paper
* Commons' Journals, Die Sabbati, Office.
414 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
cluded that they would receive a little more than their
usual pay when employed on this extraordinary service;
and 1s. 6d. a week, the difference between 8s. 6d. a week
and the 58, a week above mentioned, may be taken as an
addition to their pay as foot-soldiers.
Besides this pay, the troops of the Parliament were
allowed money to pay for their quarters, at the rate,
according to many minutes in the Order Book of the
Council of State, of 6d. a day for each foot-soldier, and 1s.
a day for each horse-soldier. These allowances are with
special reference to the troops ordered for transportation
to Ireland in 1649, “during the stay at the waterside for
wind and weather; ” and are somewhat higher than
those in the following order of the House of 29th June of
the same year:-‘‘ Ordered, that this House doth approve
of what the General hath done in allowing 2s. 6d. a week
to each soldier and non-commissioned officer of foot, and
the train of artillery, and 3s. 8d. the week to the horse,
over and above the established pay, in consideration of
billet-money, during such time as they did quarter within
the city of London and Westminster, and the parts
adjacent.”” - -
It would appear, however, from the following minute,
that about the beginning of the year 1652, the pay of the
foot was 10d. a day; and that the 18, a day allowed by
the minute of December 25, 1651, to the two regiments
appointed for the guard of the Parliament, was not double
the pay of the other regiments of foot, but only 26, a day
more :- -
“That 2d. per diem be added to the pay of the inferior
officers and soldiers of the two regiments appointed for
* Order Book of the Council of March 27, 1649.
State, May 29, 1649, MS. State Paper * Commons' Journals, Die Veneris,
Office. Ibid. August 25, 1649. Ibid. Junii 29, 1649,
==
=
1652.] EXTRA PAY OF CROMWELL'S REGIMENTS. 415
the guard of the Parliament and city, more than is allowed
to the rest of the army; and that it be paid out of the
Lord-General’s contingencies, according to their several
musters, and to begin from the 25th of December last
inclusive.”"
This additional 2d. a day, “to be paid out of the Lord-
General’s contingencies,” would to the soldiers have the
appearance of being paid out of Cromwell’s own pocket.
This, in fact, amounted to giving him a sort of Praetorian
Guard. It will be seen that the two following minutes,
made on the 25th of December, 1651, are to the same
purpose and effect:—
“That it be especially recommended to the Committee
of Parliament for disposal of the Commonwealth’s houses,
to cause all necessary repairs to be made at James’s
for the convenient quartering and accommodation of the
soldiers of both regiments appointed for the guard of the
Parliament and city, so as that the three companies at
Syon College may be also brought to James’s, and that
quarter at Syon College quitted.””
“That £50 be paid unto Major Wiggan and Major
Allen upon accompt, for fire and candles for the several
guards kept by the two regiments about Whitehall,
James’s, and the city, and that this money be paid out of
the Lord-General’s contingencies.” "
* Order Book of the Council of sent, and likewise to consider how they
State, Tuesday, January 6, 1653, MS.
State Paper Office.
* Ibid. December 25, 1651.
* Ibid. same day.—On November 4,
1652, the Council ordered, “That it be
referred to the Committee for Irish and
Scottish Affairs, to consider of and ap-
point a fit proportion of match, pow-
der, and bullets for the use of the
Lord-General's regiment for the pre-
may be speedily furnished with beds;
and also how they may be constantly
supplied for the future with a fitting
proportion of ammunition, and have
some of their musquets changed for
snaphances.” — Ibid. Thursday, No-
vember 4, 1652. The body of mus-
keteers selected by Cromwell to turn
out the members of the Parliament
would naturally be those supplied by
416 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
The Lord-General’s regiments were just as much entitled,
if they were entitled at all, to higher pay than the other
regiments of the Parliament, when Fairfax was Lord-
General, as when Cromwell was Lord-General. And
there was no more reason for paying their extra pay and
their extra accommodation and conveniences out of the
Lord-General’s contingencies when Cromwell was Lord
General, than when Fairfax was Lord-General; at least,
no more reason than this, that Fairfax was a man of whom
it has been said:
“He might have been a king,
But that he understood
How much it was a meaner thing
To be unjustly great, than honourably good.”
If any man ever lived whose intellectual supremacy
might so dazzle us as to make us submit without repining
to a despotism, that man was Julius Caesar. But let us
look at the result. The reign of Julius Caesar himself was
short; but it prepared the way for the long reign of his
great-nephew Augustus, who, though far from possessing
the dazzling intellectual qualities of Julius, had still suffi-
cient ability to govern in such a manner, that Rome
enjoyed more quiet under his rule than it had done for
ages; so that his rule might be considered as that sort
of government called a good despotism. But the effect
was to change altogether the Roman character. Before
that time the Romans might be on the whole bad men.
But yet they were men; not slaves—creatures, half-fiend
and half-baboon; men with the courage and enterprise,
those members with Snaphances—that * Poem on the death of the Lord
is, with flintlock instead of matchlock Fairfax, by George Duke of Bucking-
muskets. Well might John Lilburne ham, in vol. i. p. 135 &c. of the Works
say, “Alas, poor fools! we were merely of His Grace George Williers, late
cheated and cozened.”—See Vol. I. Duke of Buckingham : 2 vols. 3rd ed-
p. 158. ition, London, 1715.
1652.] A GOOD DESPOTISM IS A FALSE II)EAL. 417
with the mental energy and bodily activity, of statesmen-
soldiers; for it makes a vast difference, when a man’s
education comprehends oratory as well as military science,
and when oratory is left out. The very cultivation of
oratory has a twofold significance. On the part of the
man who cultivates it, it implies a cultivation of the higher,
though not of the highest, mental faculties. And on the
part of the men to whom it is intended to be applied, it
implies a Government in which there is still a certain
portion of freedom. Julius Caesar himself studied oratory
under the same Greek master as Cicero; and in some of
Cicero’s greatest causes, he acted as that great Orator’s
junior counsel. This education forms a set of men very
different from the mere drill-sergeants and barrack-masters
of a military despotism, where one man undertakes to do
all the thinking of all the community, that is to have any
practical result, and where real and vigorous thinking—the
thinking which, to borrow the words of Mr. John Stuart
Mill, “ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams”—is
totally prohibited.
We have seen an attempt recently made to prove that
despots are necessary to “the progress of humanity.”
What sort of progress that is, is very visibly written in the
records of what the Romans were before and after the
Empire. In short, to quote a great modern writer, “a good
despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically
(except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes
the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras. Evil for
evil, a good despotism, in a country at all advanced in
civilisation, is more noxious than a bad one ; for it is far
more relaxing and enervating to the thoughts, feelings,
and energies of the people. The despotism of Augustus
prepared the Romans for Tiberius. If the whole tone of
VOL. II. . E E
418 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
their character had not first been prostrated by nearly two
generations of that mild slavery, they would probably have
had spirit enough left to rebel against the more odious
One.” "
The records of crime prove that when any crime (a
murder, for instance, of unusual atrocity) has been com-
mitted, there is a tendency observed to a repetition of that
crime. The wretched criminal’s sudden celebrity appears
to act on the minds of certain persons, so as to produce
in them an insane desire of imitating the criminal acts
which have created such a public interest. But there are
certain crimes, which have relation, not to taking away the
life of an individual, but to crushing out the life of a whole
nation, that appear to be attended with consequences .
similar to, but infinitely more fatal than, those which
follow the crime of a common assassin. Then the great
criminal becomes a hero in the eyes of some, on the ground
of his having substituted repose—the repose of death—for
anarchy; in the eyes of others, on the mere ground of his
force of character, his courage, his energy, and his strength
of will. But these are but a small part of the disastrous
consequences of the success of great criminals.
A great crime, successfully committed by a great man,
has consequences that last for ages; and of such great
crimes none, perhaps, produced more fatal consequences
than that of Cromwell. The world saw a man, who had
raised himself to supreme power by a breach of the most
solemn engagements, hold himself up as the elect of God.
When his old comrades heard this man tell them, as he
did in his speeches—and it was almost all that was intelli-
gible in those emanations of the kingdom of darkness—
* Considerations on Representative Government, by John Stuart Mill:
London, 1861, p. 53. -
1652.] A GREAT CRIME BY A GREAT MAN. 419
that he had a key to unlock the gates of heaven, as well
as a sword to command the strongholds of the earth; that
the Everlasting and Omnipotent had adopted him as His
favourite ; that the bowing the knee to him, Oliver Crom-
well, was an “owning of Jesus Christ; ” that he, the
Judas of his party, was to reign with Christ in heaven,
after he had betrayed the men who trusted him on earth:
and when they saw that everything prospered with him—
that he was an overmatch for those of his party who, like
Blake and Ireton, were too highminded to make use of
packed cards and loaded dice—can we wonder that a re-
vulsion took place in the minds of men 9—that, if from the
apotheosis of James Stuart men sought refuge in Puritan-
ism, and in fighting for religion and liberty, from the
apotheosis of Oliver Cromwell they should seek refuge in
slavery, profligacy, and atheism or devil-worship, which is
worse?
There is something intensely revolting in this apotheosis
of a man, who can be proved to have been the cause of
deep disgrace and innumerable evils to the English nation;
to that nation which, after having fought for its rights
and liberties as no other nation had ever fought, was, as a
consequence of the usurpation of Cromwell, again sub-
jected to the tyranny of the Stuarts; and then to the
disgrace of having to be delivered from that tyranny by
the sword of a Dutchman. -
I have said in a former page," that this Parliament were
most able and energetic administrators; but that, “if they
had possessed that higher statesmanship which can employ
a comprehensive survey of the past in a wise divination
of the future, they might have seen clearly enough what
the end would be.” The situation, indeed, in which they
* See Vol. I. of this History, p. 216.
E E 2
420 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
stood was not a common situation. It was one of rare
occurrence; and hundreds, nay thousands, of years might
not present its exact parallel. Yet there was a situation,
with which all of them were more or less acquainted, and
which, though separated from them by near two thousand
years of time, as well as by distance of place and difference
in race, religion, and laws, might, if deeply pondered on and
closely studied, have been of some use to them.
Gunpowder and steam may change the aspect of war.
But man remains unchanged—the same moral and politi-
cal agent that he was when there was neither steam nor
gunpowder. The English Parliament of the year 1651
made nearly the same blunder, in regard to Cromwell, that
the Roman Senate had made, 1,700 years before, in regard
to Julius Caesar. The Roman Senate committed several
illegal acts, with the view of protecting themselves by
keeping down Caesar. But these acts only increased
Caesar’s chances, and diminished their own. The capital
blunder of the English Parliament was their persistence in
not dissolving themselves. They thus put the most power-
ful weapon into Cromwell's hands against themselves.
In speaking of this reluctance of the Parliament to
put an end to their sitting, it ought, in strict accuracy,
to be noted that there were two parties in the Parliament,
opposed to each other on this point. We have seen in a
former chapter," that in one of the divisions on the 14th
of November 1651, on this subject, there was a minority
of 46 to 50, in the other of 47 to 49, against entertaining
the question at all of putting an end to their sitting. In
both divisions Cromwell was one of the tellers for the
majority for fixing a time for their dissolution. And
1 Chapter XII.
1652.] RETRENCHMENT OF FORCES AND GARRISONS. 421
this important fact gives Cromwell some solid ground
for his assertion, that there was a “corrupt party '' in
the House who wished to perpetuate themselves; and, as
will be easily seen, it greatly complicates the question
we have to deal with—a question to which we shall
have repeatedly to return in this chapter. I have used the
words “English Parliament,” instead of “a part of the
English Parliament,” because, though the minority of 46
or 47 were against entertaining at all the question of
dissolution, the majority of 49 or 50 put off the dissolution
too long.
It would seem that those measures of the Parliament
which most displeased and alarmed Cromwell were mea-
sures dictated by the soundest policy. It is obvious that,
while the Government was subjected to such extraordinary
expenditure by the exigencies of the war with Holland, it
was at once their interest and their duty to diminish
their other expenditure as much as possible. The most
obvious and effective mode of accomplishing this was to
make some retrenchments in regard to their military
forces. On the 13th of September 1652 the Council of
State made the following order:-
“That the Lord-General [Cromwell] and the General
Officers of the army be sent unto, and desired to
come to the Committee for Irish and Scottish Affairs, on
Thursday morning next, to speak with the said Committee
concerning the retrenchment of some forces and garrisons.” "
This was the hitch, which Cromwell determined to avoid
by turning out the Parliament. And yet, what could be
more advantageous at that time to the nation, though not
to Cromwell and his “creature colonels,” than to reduce
| Order Book of the Council of State, Monday, September 13, 1652, MS.
State Paper Office. *.
sº
422 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
the military expenditure, when the necessary expenses of
the fleet were so great P -
There are several minutes in the Order Book in the
months of September and October 1652, which appear to
indicate that the Council of State, besides the general re-
trenchment of their land forces and garrisons, had par-
ticularly turned their attention to the reducing of those
formidable regiments which were quartered immediately
round the Parliament, and were termed the Lord-General’s
[Cromwell's], Colonel Ingoldsby’s, and Colonel Goffe’s regi-
ments. On Thursday the 30th of September, the Council
of State made a minute, with respect to “taking into
consideration the reducing of the Lord-General’s, Colonel
Ingoldsby’s, and Colonel Goffe's regiments.””
On Thursday next, the 7th of October, the Council of
State ordered :— --
“That the Lord-General’s regiment of foot be continued,
to the number of 1,200 men, for six weeks longer; and that
a letter be written to the Committee for the Army, to issue
out their warrants for the payment of them to that time.””
There are reasons enough for these proceedings on the
part of the Council set forth in their minutes, without in the
least ascribing them to a jealousy of Cromwell—reasons
founded on the imperious necessities of their situation, on
the constant and urgent demands on the public treasury
for the Dutch war—demands which tasked for their supply
all their genius and energy as statesmen. All this is for-
cibly shown in such minutes as the following:—
“That Mr. Salwey be desired humbly to represent to
the Parliament the distracted state of the Treasury as it
* Order Book of the Council of MS. State Paper Office.
State, Thursday, September 30, 1652, * Ibid. Thursday, October 7, 1652.
1652.] SIR ROGER TWYSDEN’S TESTIMONY. 423
now stands, the great inconveniences of which the Council
find every day.” " *
One day in November 1652, Cromwell, in the course of
a conversation with Whitelock, whom he had met in St.
James’s Park, amid some just enough objections against
the Parliament, such as “their designs to perpetuate them-
selves, and to continue the power in their own hands,”
also stated “their meddling in private matters between
party and party, contrary to the institution of Parliaments,
and their unjustness and partiality in these matters.” Sir
Roger Twysden’s Journal, lately published in the “Archaeo-
logia, Kantiana” from the Roydon Hall MSS., furnishes
some corroborative evidence in support of this statement
of Cromwell, as reported by Whitelock. Towards the end
of his Journal, Sir Roger Twysden says:—“God of His mercy
grant that, for the future, it may never see a perpetuity
added to the two Houses of Parliament; nor Committees to
manage the justice of the kingdom, and sit judges of men’s
liberties, estates, and fortunes; admitting not the law for
their rule, but their own arbitrary, ambiguous, revocable,
disputable orders and ordinances.” In another place he
says: “Certainly their severity was so notorious, and their
extortions so full of scandal, as the officers of the army
(who ever seemed to me more full of honour and mercy than
the House of Commons) did desire, the 1st of August 1647,
compositions on sequestrations might be lessened ; and
Cromwell, in his speech of the 12th of September 1654,
told the Parliament then assembled, ‘Boor men, under
their arbitrary power, were driven like flocks of sheep, by
forty in a morning, to the confiscation of goods and estates,
without any man being able to give a reason that two of
* Order Book of the Council of State, Thursday, September 30, 1652, MS.
State Paper Office.
424 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
them had deserved to forfeit a shilling.’”" These words
would have come with much more effect from Cromwell if
his own hands had been clean, and if he had not profited
more than anyone else by the confiscations of which he
professes to complain. -
But the principal feature of their proceedings, strikingly
exemplified in Sir Roger Twysden’s case, was this—that if
you had any one enemy in the Committee, it was impos-
sible to obtain justice, for “ against malice there was no
fence.”” Thus, “any leading man of a Committee maligning
another (though never so quiet a liver), as having a better
estate, seat, house, accommodation to it, than he wished
him, did find means to ruin him, under the title of his
disaffecting their courses and the present cause.” ” Sir
Boger Twysden’s own case was a striking example of this:
the harsh proceedings against him, the imprisoning him-
self, sequestering his estate for several years, cutting down
the timber about his mansion-house, being all brought
about by two leading men of the Committee of Kent, Sir
Anthony Weldon and Sir John Sedley.
Sir Roger Twysden mentions another remarkable case:
“To which purpose,” he says, “I shall here set down
what I had from a good hand, and I believe was
true. A powerful person of those times (Sir Arthur
Haselrig), riding by a handsome seat, well-wooded and
pleasant otherwise, in the North, enquired to whom it
belonged; and finding it unsequestered, the owner not in
the Parliament’s service, he could not contain himself
from saying he had an earthworm in his breast must have
| Sir Roger Twysden's Journal, together and paged consecutively, the
p. 66.-The Journal was printed in page here quoted is page 66.
successive volumes of the “Archaeologia * Ibid. p. 168.
Rantiana.” When the successive por- * Ibid.
tions of the Journal have been bound
1652.] INTEGRITY OF WANE AND OTHERS. 425
the estate sequestered; and never left pursuing the
owner till he got it done. The truth of this I cannot
aver, only I had it from old Sir Henry Vane, a person
of that worth and honour, I dare say he would not
have spoke it but on good grounds.” . This story cer-
tainly tends to add weight to the charge of great rapacity
made against Sir Arthur Haselrig by John Lilburne and
Others.”
The fact is that the Council of State, from the many
domestic and foreign enemies they had to encounter, were
driven to resort to all the means they could devise, to raise
the money necessary for the equipment and pay of their
fleets and armies. One of these means was the seques-
tration of the estates of those they called “delinquents,”
that is, of those who favoured the opposite party. There
are various minutes in the Order Book of the Council of
State, which, though we have not the key to unlock their
whole import, seem to have reference to this subject. I
will transcribe one of these, which certainly has the
appearance of hunting for sequestrations:—
“That power be given to the Lord-Commissioner White-
lock, and the rest of the Committee appointed to receive
a proposition for the discovery and bringing in of money, to
dispose of the sum of £100 in such way, and to such
persons, as they shall think fit, for the advantage of the
publique.” ”
But these things do not, by any means, amount to a
proof of universal corruption on the part of the Parlia-
ment and the Council of State. On the contrary, some of
the leading members of that wonderful band of statesmen
| Sir Roger Twysden's Journal, * Order Book of the Council of
p. 168. State, Thursday, February 12, 1653,
* See Vol. I. of this History, p. 195. MS. State Paper Office.
426 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
and statesmen-soldiers were of an integrity pure as the
driven snow. And the solemn words uttered by Sir Henry
Wane the younger, on the scaffold, were literally true of
himself, of Ireton, of Blake, of Scot, of Ludlow, of Sydney,
and of many others. Just before the trumpets were
sounded in his face, to prevent him from being heard, Sir
Henry Vane, lifting up his eyes and spreading his hands,
spoke these words: “I do here appeal to the Great God
of Heaven, and all this assembly, or any other person, to
show wherein I have defiled my hands with any man’s
blood or estate, or that I have sought myself in any public
capacity or place I have been in l’’’
There is also considerable weight in the answer made
to Sir Roger Twysden, when he desired he might be
charged with the breach of any law : “In these times the
House could not look at the nice observance of law.” It
was, in fact, a time of revolutionary struggle—a time when
a great change was taking place in the English Govern-
ment—a change which was to make the House of Com-
mons what it has been ever since, the Supreme power in
the State—a time when the great actors in the struggle
must be statesmen, not lawyers. No man knew this better
than Cromwell, and no man had acted more thoroughly
on this principle. But it now suited him to turn round
on the men with whom he had acted, and repudiate both
them and his former self. Moreover, the MS. records of
the Council of State prove, that while the application in
private matters to the Council of State might arise from the
anomalous state of the Government, the Council of State
generally referred such matters to the proper legal tribunals.
The following is one of many instances of the Council of
Trial of Sir Henry Vane, Knight, p. 477.
small 4to, 1662, p. 88. See title of * Sir Roger Twysden's Journal,
this curious old volume in full, post, p. 49.
1652.] CROMWELL AND WHITELOCK. 427
State’s declining to interfere in matters belonging to the
Courts of Justice:–
“That the petition of Mary Downes, widow, relict of
Roger Downes, Esq., deceased, be recommended to the
consideration of the Lords Commissioners of the Great
Seal, to proceed therein, according to law and justice.” "
The following is to the same effect:—
“Upon reading the petition of the Lord Baltimore, it is
this day ordered, that the said Lord Baltimore be left to
pursue his cause according to law.””
It is not often that a Government has left behind them
such conclusive and irrefragable evidence as this, to rebut
the calumnies of their destroyers, and to vindicate their
memory to after-ages. -
Cromwell, in the course of the conversation with White-
lock, to which I have already referred,” put to Whitelock
the following startling question :- -
“What if a man should take upon him to be King 9 °
Whitelock-º'I think that remedy would be worse than
the disease.”
Cromwell.—“Why do you think so 9°
Whitelock.-“As to your own person, the title of King
would be of no advantage, because you have the full
kingly power in you already, concerning the militia, as
you are General. So that I apprehend less envy, and
danger, and pomp, but not less power and opportunities of
doing good, in your being General, than would be if you
had assumed the title of King.” “
1 Order Book of the Council of “the enemies of Cromwell began to
State, Monday, December 22, 1651, multiply very fast”—“that it had
MS. State Paper Office. given him a blow at the heart, and
* Ibid. Tuesday, December 23, 1651. that he will not long be anything.”
* See ante, p. 423. —Sir Edward Nicholas to Lord Cul-
* There is a concurrence of cotem- pepper, June 8, 1657: see Granville
porary evidence that, on Cromwell's Penn's Memorials of Sir William Penn,
manifesting an ambition to be King, vol. ii. p. 8.
428 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
-
Cromwell.—“What do you apprehend would be the
danger of taking this title 9” *
Whitelock.-‘‘The danger, I think, would be this. One
of the main points of controversy betwixt us and our
adversaries is, whether the Government of this nation
shall be established in monarchy, or in a free State or
Commonwealth. Now, if your Excellency shall take upon
you the title of King, this state of our cause will be thereby
wholly determined, and monarchy established in your
person; and the question will be no more whether our
Government shall be by a monarch or by a free State, but
whether Cromwell or Stuart shall be our king and monarch.
And that question, wherein before so great parties of the
nation were engaged, and which was universal, will by
this become, in effect, a private controversy only : before,
it was national—what kind of Government we should
have ; now, it will become particular—who shall be our
governor?—whether of the family of the Stuarts, or of the
family of the Cromwells? Thus, the state of our contro-
versy being totally changed, all those who were for a
Commonwealth (and they are a very great and considerable
party), having their hopes therein frustrated, will desert
you.”
Cromwell.—“I confess you speak reason in this ; but
what other thing can you propound, that may obviate the
present dangers and difficulties wherein weareallengaged?”
Whitelock then represents himself as propounding a
private treaty with the King of Scots, whereby Cromwell
might secure himself and his friends, and their fortunes;
and might put such limits to monarchical power, as would
secure the spiritual and civil liberties of the nation. To
this proposition Cromwell thus replied:—“I think you
have much reason for what you propound, but it is a
-
=.
1652.] “SELF IN THE HIGHEST.” 429
matter of so high importance and difficulty, that it deserves
more time of consideration and debate than is at present
allowed us. We shall therefore take a further time to
discourse of it.”
Whitelock adds: “With this the General broke off,
and went to other company, and so into Whitehall, seem-
ing, by his countenance, displeased with what I had said;
yet he never objected it against me in any public meeting
afterwards. Only his carriage towards me from that time
was altered, and his advising with me not so frequent and
intimate as before.” "
The words of Whitelock's statement, “by a treaty with
him you may secure yourself, and your friends and their
fortunes—you may put such limits to monarchical power,
as will secure our spiritual and civil liberties,” are exceed-
ingly important; and Cromwell’s utter neglect of securing
anybody but himself, and anything but his own power and
fortune—so thoroughly bearing out the truth of John
Lilburne’s happy expression, “self in the highest”—leaving
brave and devoted and single-hearted soldiers, such as
Harrison and Hacker, who had shed their blood for him in
so many battles, to die a death of torture and ignominy,
has always appeared to me the worst and darkest part of
his strange character.
When this conference took place between Cromwell and
Whitelock, nearly four years had elapsed since the death
of King Charles. During those four eventful years, the
Rump of the Long Parliament had talked about resigning
their power, and going out to make way for their succes-
sors; but there was a hitch somewhere in the matter of
going out. Whatever arguments may be used to show
' Whitelock's Memorials, pp. 549–551.
430 - COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
that these residuary members of the Long Parliament
really did mean to go at last, and not to perpetuate the
supreme trust and power in their own persons, and to
debar the people from their right of elections—that they
were only waiting till the right moment should arrive—
there can be no doubt that their delays in this momentous
business were the means of putting a most powerful
weapon against themselves into the hands of a man who,
as we shall see, knew well how to make use of it for his
own purposes. If Cromwell had made use of the expulsion
of the Parliament as really the first step for paving the
way to a new and free Parliament—if he had clearly shown
by his acts that self-aggrandisement was not his object"—
the reluctance to resign their power, manifested by the
Rump, might certainly serve as some justification for his
doing what he did in the first instance. But what are we
to think of the consistency, of the morality, of the honesty
of a man, who proceeded to dispose of by his will, as if it
were a private property, the dominion of his country, after
having been a party to that Representation of the Army
already quoted, which, in the clearest terms that words are
capable of expressing, declares against “ any absolute arbi-
trary power, engrossed for perpetuity into the hands of any
particular person or party whatsoever” 2
The course pursued by Cromwell has had indeed de-
fenders, some of whom have defended him on the ground
of his proceeding being the only available protection
against anarchy; while others have prostrated themselves
* “If he had made use of his leave his own family, together with
power to establish the just liberties of the whole body of the people, in a
the nation, he might live more most happy and flourishing condition.”
honoured and esteemed, have the plea- —Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 567:
sure and satisfaction arising from so 2nd edition, London, 1721.
generous an action, when he died, and
1652.] DEFENDERS OF CROMWELL. 431
eL)
at his feet, and while they have worshipped him as an
object of idolatry, have been very profuse of their scorn
and reprobation towards all who refuse to do the like, and
particularly towards those members of the Rump who
persisted in refusing to recognise his authority.
The answer to the latter class of the defenders of Crom-
well, who have sought to deify Cromwell, and to heap op-
probrious epithets on all who have refused to worship their
idol, is shortly that, as was long ago remarked, “no man
can be expected to oppose arguments to epithets; ” and
that, though opprobrious epithets and scurrilous jesting
may pass for fine writing among barbarians, they have
little weight among civilised men, who, whatever be their
faults, will admit the truth of an observation of a great
English writer of the 17th century, in reference to some
scurrilous attacks upon himself, that “to a public writing
there belong good manners.” "
The argument of those who have defended Cromwell on
the ground of his proceedings being the only protection
against anarchy, is founded on an imperfect and incorrect
view of the facts of the case—a view which confounds this
case with another, which, - though somewhat similar,
is not identical ; as when we see, as we constantly do,
well-informed public writers asserting that a Cromwell
or a Napoleon is needed to prevent anarchy. Now, though
“And first for the strength of his and Scurrilous jesting. And lastly,
discourse, and knowledge of the point
in question, I think it much inferior
to that which might have been writ-
ten by any man living, that had no
other learning besides the ability to
write his mind. Secondly, for the
manners of it (for to a public writing
there belong good manners), they
consist in railing, and exclaiming,
for his elocution, the virtue whereof
lieth not in the flux of words, but in aſſº
perspicuity, it is the same language
with that of the kingdom of darkness.”
—The Question concerning Liberty,
Necessity, and Chance, clearly stated
and debated between Dr. Bramhall,
Bishop of Derry, and Thomas Hobbes
of Malmesbury: London, 1656.
432 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, [CHAP, XVI.
Napoleon might be needed to prevent anarchy, Cromwell
was most decidedly not. On the contrary, it was Cromwell’s
usurpation which caused the anarchy which, by confusion
of ideas and of facts, has been transferred from its proper
place to a place which does not belong to it—namely, from
the state of confusion caused by Cromwell’s unjust usurpa-
tion, to the state of order and of good and strong govern-
ment which his evil ambition destroyed.
To no Government that ever existed upon earth could
the term “anarchy’ be more unjustly applied than to
that Government which existed in England from 1648
to 1653. But between 1653 and 1660 there were—as
Hobbes has shown, in a passage of his “Behemoth,” with
his characteristic clearness and precision—six changes or
“shiftings” of the supreme authority. ' There never,
probably, has been a more complete example of confusion
of ideas, perversion of facts, and consequent illogical and
inaccurate conclusions, than is afforded by the confounding
of these historical phenomena in such a way, and to such
a degree, as to compare the Government of the Council
of State—composed of such statesmen as Wane, Scot,
and Sydney, which was destroyed by Oliver Cromwell, to be
succeeded by, first, a narrow and hard military despotism,
and then an anarchy—with that preeminently bad French
Government, which may be called the Government of the
Guillotine, and by putting an end to which Napoleon
Bonaparte may be said to have substituted a military
despotism for anarchy. In the case of England and
Cromwell, military despotism did not prevent, it produced
anarchy, though the contrary has been so long and so con-
fidently asserted.
The answer, then, to those who affirm that the course
* Hobbes's Behemoth, pp. 322, 323 : London, 1682.
1653.] OTHER COURSES OPEN TO CROMWELL, 433
Cromwell pursued was the only course practicable under
the circumstances of the case—that it was what is, in the
modern German jargon, called a historical or political
necessity—is that it was not a political necessity, inas-
much as, as has been already proved from the minutes of
the Council of State of the Long Parliament, and can be
further proved from the minutes of Cromwell’s Council
of State, the Long Parliament governed infinitely better
than Cromwell; and, further, that to Cromwell, as to all
men in his situation, there are always two paths open—the
one that which has been trodden by ten thousand tyrants—
the other that which has been chosen by the few men who
have been able to resist the greatest temptation to crime
known to mortals—by Epaminondas, by Timoleon, by
Washington—the great men who, in the dispute about
the value of such men in history, at least are good to show
that truth, justice, and honour are not altogether extinct
among mankind. Will it be pretended that two thousand
years ago, Sicilian Greeks—people of a temperament which
made them such easy victims to tyrant after tyrant—could
justly appreciate the magnanimity of Timoleon, when, after
having delivered them from all their domestic tyrants and
from all their foreign enemies, he voluntarily resigned his
dictatorship; and could universally recognise in him a
man who had amply earned, what Xenophon' calls, “that
good, not human but divine, command over willing men’—
“a man uncorrupted by a career of superhuman success”—
“a man whom everyone loved, trusted, and was grieved to
offend—a man who sought not to impose his own will
upon free communities, but addressed them as free-
men, building only upon their reason and sentiments, and
Xenoph. CEconomic. xxi. 12.
* Grote's History of Greece, vol. xi. p. 272.
VOL. II. F F
434 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
carrying out, in all his recommendations of detail, the
instincts of free speech, universal vote, and equal laws;”
and that Englishmen, living in the middle of the
17th century, would have been unable to appreciate at
its just value, and to turn to its right use, a similar act of
magnanimous justice on the part of Oliver Cromwell?
Besides the direct political consequences of such an act
and of its contrary, which are great enough, the social and
moral consequences are of unspeakable extent and magni-
tude. How many a villain on a small scale has justified,
at least to himself, his career of self-aggrandisement,
through all the adroit falsehoods which make mean villains”
rich and prosperous, by the audacious violation of truth
and the gigantic villany of Cromwell!”
It is observable that these three truly great men, Epa-
minondas, Timoleon, and Washington, were all alike exempt
from the irascible and vindictive as well as the ambitious
passions. What Mr. Grote has said of Timoleon is appli-
cable no less to the other two. Timoleon “was distin-
guished no less for his courage than for the gentleness of
his disposition. Little moved either by personal vanity
or by ambition, he was devoted in his patriotism, and
unreserved in his hatred of despots, as well as of
traitors.” “ The furious transports of rage which took
* Grote's History of Greece, vol. xi.
p. 267.
* “No villany, no flagitious action,
was ever yet committed, but a lie was,
first or last, the principal engine to ef-
fect it.”—South.
* It is one of the greatest of human
misfortunes, that the evil which great
men do is so much more apt to be imi-
tated than the good. “Quo in genere
multum mali etiam in exemplo est.
Studiose enim plerique facta principum
imitantur : ut L. Luculli, summi viri,
virtutem, quis? at quam multivillarum
magnificentiam imitatisunt l”-—Cicero
De Off. i. 39. :
* Grote's History of Greece, vol. xi.
p. 192. Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 3. . .
. . . . Pixóratpus 6* ſcal trpaos 8tapep-
6vros, Šara pah oglööpa utodrupavvos
eivat kal utorotróvmpos. Condorcet
says of Turgot that, notwithstanding
the gentleness of his character he could
not dissemble his hatred for knaves,
his contempt for cowardice or base-
ness: but that these sentiments neither
*
1653.] GOOD AND BAD GREAT MEN. 435
possession at times of Cromwell, of Frederic, of Napoleon,
never darkened the clear, calm, and well-tempered minds
of Epaminondas, of Timoleon, of Washington. This
fact alone, however, would hardly constitute the specific
difference between the two classes of great men; for
Julius Caesar, who belonged in essentials to the former
class, possessed as much gentleness or mildness in his
political antipathies as any of the latter class.
It is also observable that each of these three men, of
politically stainless name, was born and educated in an
oligarchical community—a fact (however philosophers
may interpret its meaning) which ought to be recorded,
amid the many unfavourable exhibitions which oligar-
chies have presented to the world. I know no individual
statesman produced in democratical Athens, or in demo-
cratical America, who can be compared to them. Socrates,
who equalled them in high-souled and disinterested
heroism, was a philosopher only, and not a practical
The very example of such men is of inesti-
mable value. Mr. Grote considers the difference in the
careers of Timoleon and Dion to be due to the fact that
the person whom Timoleon selected for his peculiar model
was Epaminondas, the noblest model that Greece afforded,
with his energetic patriotism, his freedom from personal
ambition, his gentleness of political antipathy, and the
politician.
inspired him with a spirit of injustice
nor of vengeance. What Condorcet
has recorded of Turgot—“that constant
agreement between his conduct and his
principles, his sentiments and his rea-
son; that union of an inexorable jus-
tice with the gentlest humanity; of
sensibility with firmness of character;
of justness of understanding with depth
and subtlety; that firm adherence to
his opinions without ever exaggerating
them; the sentiments all pure, the
emotions all either gentle or coura-
geous, the calm spirit full of candour
and justice” (Vie de Turgot, p. 290,
Londres, 1786)—may be well applied
also to Timoleon; while in the latter
were added talents for action of the
highest order, forming altogether a
character perhaps unparalleled in his-
tory.
I F 2
436 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
perfect habits of conciliatory and popular dealing which
he manifested, amidst so many new and trying scenes, to
the end of his career. While, on the other hand, Dion, a
member of a despotic family, and bred under the energetic
despotism of the elder Dionysius, had never learnt to take
account of the temper or exigencies of a community of
freemen. “The source from which he drank was the
Academy and its illustrious teacher, Plato—not from
practical life, nor from the best practical politicians like
Epaminondas.” "
Ludlow says that some discerning men of the Parlia-
ment, especially those who had the management of the
war with Holland, observing the mine which Cromwell
was working, endeavoured to countermine him, by ba-
lancing his interest in the army with that of the fleet,
procuring an order from the Parliament to send some
regiments from the army to strengthen the fleet.” This
statement is fully borne out by various minutes of the
Council of State already given, as well as by the two fol-
lowing minutes of Friday the 2nd of January, 1653 –
“That it be recommended to the Commissioners for the
Admiralty, to take care that the supernumerary soldiers
now disbanded out of the regiments in Scotland, may, when
they come into England, be disposed to the service of the
fleet, the Council having given order for the furnishing of
money for the bringing of them into England.”
“The Council, finding that there is at present a great
want of men for the speedy and effectual manning out of
the ships in the service of the Commonwealth, do thereupon
order, that it be recommended to the Commissioners for the
1 Grote’s History of Greece, vol. xi. * Order Book of the Council of
p. 277. State, Friday, January 21, 1652, MS.
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 450 : State Paper Office.
2nd edition, London, 1721.
1653.] BLAKES RELATIVE POSITION TO CROMWELL, 437
Admiralty to consider how a fitting proportion of land-
soldiers may be made use of for the present occasion for the
manning Out of the fleet; and that it be recommended to the
said Commissioners, to communicate with the Generals of
the fleet, concerning the apportioning of the number of
men which shall be judged necessary for that service.” "
Undoubtedly the splendour of Blake’s achievements, the
consequent importance which the fleet acquired both in
the eyes of the Parliament and of the nation, and the
constant drafting of soldiers into the fleet, furnished
new and pressing causes of uneasiness to Cromwell. If
Blake went on fighting a few more battles like his last,
besides the power and honour that would thence accrue to
the Parliament itself, there would arise in Blake a man
invested with at least as much of the magic that surrounds
a commander, whose career has been signalised by a suc-
cession of the most brilliant victories on a large scale, as
he himself had obtained; while, on the other hand, could
he in time transfer the power of the Parliament wholly to
himself, Blake and himself would no longer be co-ordinate
powers, but Blake would thenceforth stand to him in the
relation of a strictly subordinate officer. He therefore at
once—with that resolute promptitude that never deserted
him at a critical moment, and which seemed worth to him
as much as all the strategic genius of Hannibal and
Frederic (which he did not possess) was to them,-resolved
that now was the time to strike.
It was absolutely necessary for the attainment of Crom-
well’s object that he should be quite sure of the army.
After the death of Ireton, the two men who had most in-
terest with the army were Lambert and Harrison. I have
| Order Book of the Council of State, Friday, January 21, 1654, MS. State
Paper Office.
4.38 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
already shown how, on the death of Ireton, Cromwell had
secured the concurrence of Lambert in his plot against
the Parliament." Lambert was not a religious fanatic,
and, as a military man, he was the ablest in the army,
and popular among the soldiers; but he was weak as a
politician, and easily fell into the Snare set for him by a
politician so crafty as Cromwell. As religious fanaticism,
therefore, had not to be encountered in Lambert, all that
Cromwell had to do in his case was to create in him a
spirit of hostility to the Parliament, sufficiently strong
to induce him to agree to their destruction. This was
completely effected by the Parliament's refusing to send
him to Ireland with the title of Deputy.
Ludlow has given a curious account of a conversation he
had with Harrison, after that enthusiast had discovered
his mistake in aiding Cromwell to turn out the Parlia-
ment. The perfect sincerity of Harrison’s delusions is
there made apparent. Ludlow went to make Harrison a
visit at his house at Highgate, where Cromwell had per-
mitted him to remain a prisoner, after he had been a
prisoner at Pendennis Castle.” Ludlow having asked
Harrison his reasons for joining with Cromwell in turning
out the Parliament, Harrison answered that his first reason
was, “because he was fully persuaded they (the Parliament)
had not a heart to do any more good for the Lord and His
people.” “Then,” said Ludlow, “are you not now con-
* Ante, Chapter XII. his Memoirs from memory in Swit-
* Ludlow says “Carisbrook Castle;” zerland several years after the events
but, as the author of the “Memoir of happened. Vane was sent to Caris-
Thomas Harrison,” published in the brook, but Harrison was confined at
same volume (Family Library, No. Pendennis–Thurloe, vol. v. p. 407;
xxxi.) with the trial of Charles I., Godwin, vol. iv. p. 276, Mercurious
says, “Ludlow appears to be wrong, Fºmigosus, a journal of the day, No.
as he occasionally is, as to dates and 306.” p. 233, note 2.
details, owing to his having written
1653.] LUDLOW's CONVERSATION WITH HARRISON. 439
vinced of your error, since it has been seen what use has
been made of the usurped power?” To which he replied,
“Upon their heads be the guilt, who have made a wrong
use of it; for my own part, my heart was upright and
sincere in the thing.” To this Ludlow answered that,
“Though it should be granted that the Parliament was not
inclined to make so full a reformation of things amiss as
might be desired, yet he could not doubt that they would
have done as much good for the nation as it was then fitted
to receive.”
Harrison’s second reason was, “ because he owned a
sort of men who acted upon higher principles than those
of civil liberty'--the men called “saints” in his phraseo-
logy. He then cited a passage of the Prophet Daniel,
where it is said “ that the saints shall take the kingdom
and possess it.” Ludlow endeavoured to answer him, in
his own style of argument, by saying that the same prophet
says, in another place, “that the kingdom shall be given
to the people of the saints of the Most High,” and that if
they should presume to take it before it was given, they
would be guilty of doing evil that good might come of it.
Ludlow further told him “that such proceedings are not
Only unjust, but also impracticable, at least for the present ;
because we cannot perceive that the saints are clothed
with such a spirit, as those are required to be to whom the
kingdom is promised; and, therefore, we may easily be de-
ceived in judging who are fit for government, for many
have taken upon them the form of Saintship, that they
might be admitted to it, who yet have not acted suitably
to their pretensions in the sight of God or men: for proof
of which we need go no further than to those very per-
sons who had drawn him to assist them in their design
of exalting themselves, under the specious pretence of
440 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
advancing the kingdom of Christ.” Harrison admitted
the force of Ludlow's argument, as he well might, having
discovered that the reign of the saints, which Cromwell
had held out to him, meant the reign of Oliver Cromwell,
and having suffered and still suffering imprisonment for
refusing to own the identity of the reign of Cromwell with
the reign of the saints and their King Jesus; yet he said
he was not convinced that the texts of Scripture quoted
by him were not to be interpreted in the sense in which
he had taken them." *
In another place Ludlow says, that Cromwell “made
higher pretences to honesty than ever he had done before,
thereby to engage Major-General Harrison, Colonel Rich,
and their party, to himself. To this end he took all occa-
sions in their presence to asperse the Parliament, as not
designing to do those good things they pretended to, but
rather intending to support the corrupt interests of the
clergy and lawyers. And though he was convinced that
they were hastening with all expedition to put a period to
their sitting, having passed a vote that they would do it
within the space of a year, and that they were making all
possible preparations in order to it; yet did he indus-
triously publish, that they were so in love with their seats,
that they would use all means to perpetuate themselves.
These and other calumnies he had with so much art in-
sinuated into the belief of many honest and well-meaning
people, that they began to wish him prosperity in his un-
dertaking.”.” s: -
This statement of the brave, single-hearted, and uncom-
promising soldier Ludlow, is supported in all points by
the cautious, pliant, if not obsequious lawyer Whitelock.
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 563– * Ludlow, ibid. p. 449.
566: 2nd edition, London, 1721.
1653.]. CROMWELL CALUMNIATES THE PARLIAMENT. 441
After the entry in his Memorials or Journal of the last
great victory of Blake, Whitelock says that Cromwell and
some of his officers “now began to assume to themselves
all the honour of the past actions, and of the conquests
by them achieved, scarce owning the Parliament, and
their assistance and provision for them ; but taxing and
censuring the members of Parliament for injustice and
delay of business, and for seeking to prolong their power,
and promote their private interest, and satisfy their own
ambition. With these and many others the like censures,
they endeavoured to calumniate the Parliament, and judge
them guilty of those crimes whereof themselves were faulty;
not looking into their own actions, nor perceiving their
own defaults, yet censuring the actions and proceedings of
the Parliament very opprobriously.” "
The utter falsehood of the charge of “injustice and
delay of business” is made clear as the light of the sun
by the subsequent fact of the total neglect, by the
Government of Cromwell, of Blake's fleet. Blake wrote
to the Admiralty, on the 11th of March 1657, setting
forth, in the most urgent terms, the wretched condition of
his fleet—“grown so foul, by reason of a long continuance
abroad, that if a fleet outward-bound should design
to avoid us, few of our ships would be able to follow
them up.” “I have acquainted you often,” he writes,
“with my thoughts of keeping out these ships so long,
whereby they are not only rendered in a great measure
unserviceable, but withal exposed to desperate hazards:
wherein, though the Lord hath most wonderfully and
mercifully preserved us hitherto, I know no rule to tempt
Him, and therefore again mind you of it, that if any such
accident should for the future happen to the damage of his
* Whitelock's Memorials, p. 548 at seq.
442 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
Highness and the nation—which God forbid—the blame
may not be at our doors, for we account it a great mercy
that the Lord hath not given them [the Spaniards] the
opportunity to take advantage of these our damages. Truly
our fleet is generally in that condition that it troubles us
to think what the consequences may prove if such another
storm, as we have had three or four lately, should overtake
us before we have time and opportunity a little to repair.
Our number of men is lessened through death and sick-
ness, occasioned partly through the badness of victuals,
and the long continuance of poor men at sea. The
captain of the Fairfaa tells me in particular that they are
forced to call all their company on deck whenever they go
to tack.”—All the answer he could get was (instead of what
he so urgently asked for, “forthwith a sufficient supply of
able seamen”) that the Commissioners of the Admiralty
were sorry to hear of his illness, sorry also to hear of the -
wretched state of his ships; but that they could not pro-
mise him any immediate aid, because the Lord Protector’s
time was completely taken up with Parliamentary intrigues,
the great question of Kingship being then under consi-
deration." This was not the way in which the business of
the navy was managed when Vane was Chairman of the
Committee of the Admiralty that was appointed from its
own members by the Council of State. And yet Oliver
Cromwell had the audacity to charge those men with
“delay of business,” and the folly to exclaim, in that fit of
insanity in which he turned out the Parliament, “The
Lord deliver me from Sir Henry Wane !”
Ludlow goes on to say, in continuation of the passage I
have last quoted from him, “Divers of the clergy, from
* Dixon's Robert Blake, pp. 344, 9304; and MS. Orders and Instruc-
345, cites Blake's Despatch, Add. MSS. tions, May 2, 1657, Admiralty Office,
1653.] CROMWELL AND CALAMY. 443
their pulpits, began to prophesy the destruction of the Par-
liament, and to propose it openly as a thing desirable.
Insomuch that the General, who had all along concurred
with this spirit in them, hypocritically complained, to
Quartermaster-General Vernon, ‘That he was pushed on
by two parties to do that, the consideration of the issue
whereof made his hair to stand on end. One of these ?
(said he) “is headed by Major-General Lambert, who, in
revenge of that injury the Parliament did him, in not per-
mitting him to go into Ireland with a character and con-
dition suitable to his merit, will be contented with nothing
less than their dissolution: of the other Major-General
|Harrison is the chief, who is an honest man, and aims at
good things; yet, from the impatience of his spirit, will not
wait the Lord’s leisure, but hurries me on to that which
he and all honest men will have cause to repent.” Thus
did he craftily feel the pulse of men towards this work,
endeavouring to cast the infamy of it on others; reserving
to himself the appearance of tenderness to civil and
religious liberty, and of screening the nation from the fury
of the parties before-mentioned.”"
Though, as has been seen from the passage of Ludlow
last quoted, “ divers of the clergy '' prophesied from the
pulpits the destruction of the Parliament as a thing
desirable, Cromwell, part of whose policy was to have the
clergy on his side, failed to obtain the concurrence of
some of the chief of them. Cromwell held meetings with
them, for the purpose of bringing them over to his views.
But with some of them the millennial doctrine did not seem
so be so much in favour as it was with Harrison.
A curious scene, that took place at one of these meetings,
is cited by Mr. Forster, from the “Life of Henry Neville,”
| Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 449, 450 : 2nd edition, London, 1721.
444 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
a member of the Council of State, and one of those who
remained true to their Commonwealth principles to the
last —a scene which is given as from Neville’s lips :
“Cromwell, upon this great occasion, sent for some of the
chief city divines, as if he made it a matter of conscience to
be determined by their advice. Among these was the lead-
ing Mr. Calamy, who very boldly opposed Mr. Cromwell’s
project, and offered to prove it both unlawful and imprac-
ticable. Cromwell answered readily upon the first head of
“unlawful,” and appealed to the safety of the nation being
the supreme law. “ But,’ says he, pray, Mr. Calamy,
why impracticable?” Calamy replied, “Oh ’tis against
the voice of the nation; there will be nine in ten against
you.’ ‘Very well,” says Cromwell; ‘but what if I should
disarm the nine, and put a sword into the tenth man’s
hand; would not that do the business?’” And thus it
1 See Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp.
600–603: 2nd edition, London, 1721.
2 Life of Henry Neville, p. 35, cited
in Mr. Forster's Life of Cromwell, vol.
ii. pp. 52, 53: London, 1839.-Neville
was one of the most regular in his at-
tendance at the meetings of the Coun-
cil of State, and his name frequently
occurs in the minutes. I give one in-
stance: “That Mr. Neville and Mr.
Carew be added to the Commissioners
of the Council, appointed to treat with
the Dutch Ambassadors.”—Order Book
of the Council of State, Thursday, June
17, 1652, MS. State Paper Office.
Henry Neville, after the usurpation of
Cromwell, brought an action against
the Sheriff of Berkshire, for foul prac-
tices at the last return for that county.
“But not being willing,” says Ludlow,
“so far to acknowledge the present
authority as to prefer his action upon
the Instrument of Government, he was
advised by Serjeant Maynard, Mr. Allen
of Gray's Inn, and some others, to
bring his action of the case against
the Sheriff. On the day of trial, Mr.
Nevil desired Sir Arthur Haselrig,
Sir James Harrington, Mr. Scot, my-
self, and some other members of the
Long Parliament, to be present in the
court; when, after all the objections
made by the Sheriff's counsel were
overruled by the Court, and the wit-
nesses heard on both sides, the Chief
Justice (St. John) declared to the jury
how heinous a crime it was that a
sheriff should presume to impose upon
them such members as he pleased to
serve in Parliament, which was the bul-
wark of the people's liberties.” The jury
found the Sheriff guilty, and adjudged
him to pay £1,500 for damages to Mr.
Nevil, and £100 to the Commonwealth.
The conclusion of the affair is curious
and characteristic: “But now the Chief
1653.] PARLIAMENT DETERMINE TO DISSOLVE. 445
was indeed, and only thus, that the business was done.
It is not surprising, after this, that Colonel Streater should
be represented, when Harrison stoutly asserted that “he
was assured the Lord-General sought not himself, but
that King Jesus might take the sceptre,” as replying that
“Christ must come before Christmas, or else He would
come too late.”
I have said that the capital blunder of the Parliament
was their persistence in not dissolving themselves, and that
they thus put the most powerful weapon into Cromwell’s
hands against themselves.
dissolution is stated by Whitelock to have been urged by
the soldiers as of “right,” “justice,” and “public liberty,”
and though Cromwell had always shown himself eager for
But though the question of
such dissolution, the strange part of this business is that,
when the Parliament, “now perceiving” (says Ludlow),
“to what kind of excesses the madness of the army was
likely to carry them, resolved to leave as a legacy to the
people the government of a Commonwealth by their own
representatives, when assembled in Parliament, and in the
intervals thereof, by a Council of State chosen by them,
and to continue till the meeting of the next succeeding
Barliament, to whom they were to give an account of
their conduct and management, and to this end resolved,
without any further delay, to pass the Act for their now
Justice, having, as he thought, suffi-
ciently pleased the popular interest by
what he had said concerning the rights
of the people, began to contrive means
to gratify his master Cromwell, by
whose order the Sheriff had acted ; and
to this end, upon the motion of the
Sheriff's counsel, granted an arrest of
judgment, and appointed a day in the
next term to hear what could be said
on each side. In the meantime the
Sheriff conveyed away his real and
personal estate. Endeavours were
likewise used to take off Mr. Nevil,
by compounding the business.” But
Neville had the judgment recorded for
an example, “and then declared him-
self resolved to deal with the Sheriff as
became him.”—Ludlow's Memoirs, vol.
ii. pp. 600–602: 2nd edition, London,
1721.
446 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI,
dissolution,” Cromwell resolved not to suffer them to pass
that Act, but to turn them out by military force before they
could pass it. The explanation of this strange proceeding
on the part of Cromwell is, I think, that Cromwell was
(as Ludlow says), “sensible of the design, and of the con-
sequences of suffering the army to be new-moulded, and
put under another conduct,” “which the constant draughts
of soldiers into the fleet tended to do; and also that he
was afraid, “lest the disinterested proceeding of the
Parliament—who (by dissolving themselves) were about to
leave the nation under a form of government that provided
sufficiently for the good of the community—might work
the people into a greater aversion to his selfish design.” ”
Lord Macaulay has said of Lord Temple, that those
who knew his habits tracked him as men track a mole ;
that wherever a heap of dirt was flung up, it might well
be suspected that he was at work in some foul crooked
labyrinth below. But though Cromwell’s dark and tor-
tuous course might resemble that of a mole, his human
calculation, which the mole did not possess, led him to
remove the heaps of dirt which served as landmarks for
the course of the mole, and thus to obliterate, in a great
measure, the traces of his dark work. His careful keep-
ing back and, no doubt, ultimate destruction of the Bill
for a New Parliament—a business to which I will advert
more fully in a subsequent page of this chapter—was a
remarkable example of this manner of proceeding. In
other cases, such as the following, he was unable to
obliterate the marks of his tortuous course, of the crooked
ways he pursued underground.
While he was making “ the most solemn professions of
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 455: * Ludlow, ibid. p. 451.
2nd edition, London, 1721. * Ludlow, ibid. p. 452.
1653.] ALTERATION IN CROMWELL’S PLANs. 447
fidelity to the Parliament—assuring them, that if they
would command the army to break their swords over their
heads, and to throw them into the sea, he would under-
take they should do it—yet did he privately engage the
officers of the army to draw up a petition to the Parlia-
ment, that for the satisfaction of the nation they would
put that vote which they had made, for fixing a period to
their sitting, into an Act ; which, whilst the officers were
forming and debating, the General, having, it seems, for
that time altered his counsels, sent Colonel Desborough,
one of his instruments, to the Council of Officers, who told
them, that they ought to rely upon the word and pro-
mise of the Parliament to dissolve themselves by the time
prefixed; and that to petition them to put their vote into
an Act, would manifest a diffidence of them, and lessen
their authority, which was so necessary to the army. The
General, coming into the Council whilst Desborough was
speaking, seconded him : to which some of the officers
took the liberty to reply, that they had the same opinion
of the Parliament and petition with them ; and that the
chief argument that moved them to take this matter into
consideration, was the intimation they had received, that
it was according to the desires of those who had now
spoken against it, and whose latter motion they were
much more ready to comply with than their former.” "
What was the cause of this alteration in Cromwell’s
plans ? Was it that Cromwell, seeing that the Parliament
had now set about their Bill for a dissolution of the
present and the election of a new Parliament, and were
proceeding with great energy and activity in preparing it
for the final vote, saw that the reason for the petition no
| Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 451, 452: 2nd edition, London, 1721.
448 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP, XVI.
longer existed? This is the most obvious cause. But then
it involves the supposition, that Cromwell really wished
the Bill to be passed; and his subsequent proceedings
proved, in the most conclusive manner, that he did not
wish the Bill to be passed. We are then driven to seek
another cause, and to ask if he stopped the petition, lest
it might have the effect of accelerating the passing of a
Bill which he did not wish to be passed? There is, it will
be seen, a contradiction here in Cromwell’s conduct, which
cannot be explained away. He had professed himself
eager to have the question of the Parliament's dissolution
settled; and when, at last, the Parliament were proceeding
to settle it, and were on the point of finishing their work,
he expelled them by military force, carried off their Bill
for a New Parliament; and then blackened their characters
by charges, some of which I can prove to be false, and
others he did not prove to be true, though he could have
done so if they had been true.
As Ludlow, when he states that the Parliament resolved,
without any further delay, to pass the Act for their own
dissolution, says nothing about there being two parties in
the Parliament, as shown by the divisions on the vote of
14th November 1651—one of which, a majority of 50, was
for fixing a time for the dissolution, and the other, a min-
ority of 46 or 47, was against entertaining the question of
dissolution at that time—it may be inferred that those two
parties had both come to the conclusion that, under the
present circumstances, there should be no further delay.
There was, moreover, a third party, at least a certain num-
ber of members, who, according to Whitelock, were not
averse to the design of that part of the army, headed by
Cromwell, Lambert, and Harrison, to turn out the Parlia-
ment by force, “and were complotting with them to ruin
=
1653. ONE OF CROMWELL’s DARK STATE-PAPERS. 449
themselves, as by the consequence will appear.”" These
men appear to have been the dupes of a mistaken confidence
in Cromwell’s protestations and ever ready tears, as may
be inferred from Whitelock's expression, “neither could it
be clearly foreseen, that the design of Cromwell and his
officers was to rout the present power, and to set up them-
selves.” ”
About twenty members of Parliament are said, in Crom-
well's declaration, dated “Whitehall, April 22, 1653,”
to have been present at the last meeting, on the 19th of
April 1653, of what is called the Council of Officers, at
Cromwell’s lodgings in Whitehall; and these twenty
members may be assumed to represent “the Parliament
men who’” (Whitelock says) “complotted with Cromwell
and his officers to ruin themselves.” It is remarkable that
Whitelock was himself present, though he describes himself
and Widdrington as strongly dissenting from those who
were for “putting an end forthwith to this Parliament; ”
and expressing themselves freely to the effect that it would
be “a most dangerous thing to dissolve the present Parlia-
ment, and to set up any other Government, and that it
would neither be warrantable in conscience or wisdom so
to do.” ” Of the opinion for putting an end forthwith to
this Parliament, Whitelock says: “ St. John was one of
the chief, and many more with him; and generally all the
officers of the army, who stuck close in this likewise to
their General.” “ The conference lasted till late at night,
“when Widdrington and Whitelock went home weary, and
troubled to see the indiscretion and ingratitude of those
men, and the way they designed to ruin themselves.” "
! Whitelock's Memorials, p. 552: * Ibid. p. 554,
London, 1732. * Ibid].
2 Ibid. 5 Ilºil.
WOL. II, G. G.
450 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP.XVI.
It is asserted by Cromwell, in his “Declaration of the
Grounds and Reasons for dissolving the Parliament by
Force,” dated “Whitehall, April 22, 1653,” that the
members (“about twenty,” he says) present at the con-
ferences with the officers of the army at his lodgings on
the 19th of April, “ did agree to meet again the next day
in the afternoon for mutual satisfaction; it being con-
sented unto by the members present, that endeavours
should be used that nothing in the meantime should be done
'n Parliament that might exclude or frustrate the proposals
before mentioned; that, notwithstanding this, the next
morning ” (the 20th of April) “the Parliament did make
more haste than usual in carrying on their said Act, being
helped on therein by some of the persons engaged to us
the night before, none of them which were then present
endeavouring to oppose the same ; and being ready to put
the main question for consummating the said Act, whereby
our aforesaid proposals would have been rendered void,
and the way of bringing them into a fair and full debate in
Parliament obstructed; for preventing thereof, and all the
sad and evil consequences which must, upon the grounds
aforesaid, have ensued, we have been necessitated, though
with much reluctancy, to put an end to this Parlia-
- ment. 55 1
The “grounds aforesaid,” as far as they can be ascer-
tained, always a very difficult matter in Cromwell’s long
and dark state-papers, were that the “persons of honour
and integrity were rendered of no further use in Parlia-
ment, than by meeting with a corrupt party,” and thereby
enabling by their countenance that “corrupt party” to
“effect the desire they had of perpetuating themselves in
the supreme government.” - *
| Parl. Hist. vol. iii. pp. 1386–1390.
1653.] THE CONFERENCE AT CROMWELL’s LODGINGS. 451
Now it is proved, by the division on the 14th of Novem-
ber 1651, that there was a party in the House who were
against entertaining at all the question of dissolution.
This party however is also proved, by the same division, to
have been a minority, though a large minority, of the
number present; and they were outvoted, and a day fixed
for the dissolution. It is therefore demonstrated that this
assertion of Cromwell, respecting the power of a certain
part of the Parliament to “perpetuate themselves in the
supreme government,” is unsupported by evidence. More-
over, observe the inconsistency of his statement. The
Parliament on the morning of the 20th of April, “being
ready to put the main question for consummating the Act”
for dissolving themselves, “we have been necessitated to
put an end to this Parliament.” That is, he (Oliver
Cromwell) conceived himself necessitated to put an end to
the Parliament when they were in the very act of putting
an end to themselves; necessitated to prevent the consum-
mation of an act bearing the form and having much of
the substance of law, and instead of that act to do an act
at once violent and utterly illegal, and at the same time
to put an ineffaceable insult upon the Legislature and
Government of which he was the paid servant.
In regard to Cromwell’s assertion that the Members of
Parliament present at the conference at his lodgings on the
19th had left the meeting with an express understanding
that endeavours should be used to suspend all further pro-
ceedings on the Act for dissolution and a new Parliament
till the result of the conference next day, I am inclined to
think—though Whitelock makes no allusion to such a
pledge having been given on the part of himself and the
other members present at the conference—from the sudden
anger which Cromwell is reported to have evinced, on
G G 2
452 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
hearing next day what the Parliament was about, that some
such pledge may have been given. But if Whitelock and
the other members did give such a pledge, they “did so,”
as Mr. Forster justly observes, “without authority, and in
the absence of any means of redeeming it.”" For the
ablest as well as the most influential members of that great
Parliament—those by whose unwearied industry, by whose
unconquerable energy, and by whose great abilities the
Dutch war had been so successfully carried on—Vane,
Scot, Algernon Sydney, Bradshaw, and the Parliamen-
tary majority they carried with them, would have consi–
dered the proposal to mould their proceedings either in
Parliament or in the Council of State, according to the
will of Cromwell and his creatures as a species of dictation
not to be submitted to for an instant.
I have said, in a note to the preceding paragraph, that
the conferences held at Cromwell's lodgings were not only
unconstitutional, but illegal and even treasonable meet-
ings;–for they were meetings at which the destruction
of a Legislature and a Government was debated by its own
paid servants, by its own generals and some of its military
officers. Nevertheless, the singularity of the situation
might not only have excused but justified those meetings,
* Forster's Life of Oliver Cromwell,
vol. ii. p. 57: London, 1839–I will
add here a not unimportant note of Mr.
Forster in reference to that conference
on April 19, which conference, be it
observed, was, in its very. nature, not
only an unconstitutional but an illegal
and treasonable meeting. “The only
sincere (however wrong-headed) re-
publican,” says Mr. Forster, “of whose
attendance at these councils I can find
any evidence is Sir Arthur Haselrig.
That he did attend is clear from a ma-
nuscript report of a speech delivered by
him in Richard Cromwell's Parlia-
ment : “I heard, being seventy miles
off, that it was propounded that we
should dissolve our trust, and devolve
it into a few hands. I came up, and
found it so ; that it was resolved in a
junto at the Cockpit. I trembled at
it, and was, after, there, and bore my
testimony against it. I told them the
work they went about was accursed.
I told them it was impossible to de-
volve this trust.”—Ibid. p. 58, note.
1653.] THE EVE OF AN EVIL DEED. 453
if the avowed object of them had been strictly and con-
sistently carried out—the dissolution of the present, and
the election in its place of a fair and free Parliament. It
is most important to carefully note that up to this day,
this 19th of April 1653, the above-mentioned ground of
justification of these meetings being admitted, Cromwell
had committed no overt illegal act; and the meetings
having, moreover, had the effect of hastening the Parliament
to the very completion of their Bill for their dissolution
and for a new Parliament, if Cromwell had stopped here,
and allowed the Parliament to consummate their Act on
the day following, that is the 20th, he would have been
entitled to the credit of having acted upon the Parliament
for good and not for evil and would have left to after-ages
a name very different from the name which he has left.
It is very probable that Cromwell, when he went to bed
after that conference, from which Whitelock went home
weary late at night, had not determined on the irrevocable
deed which he was to do on the following day. The last
act of undertakings of that nature is apt to be, at least
partly, the result of passionate impulse. Caesar was less
subject than Cromwell to such impulses. Yet Plutarch
relates of Caesar, whose farsighted intelligence could not
fail to perceive, and who even “discussed at length with
his friends who were present all the difficulties and en-
wmerated the evils which would ensue to all mankind from his
passage of the river” (the Rubicon), that “at last with a
* Plutarch, C. Caesar, c. 32.—The
words I have marked in italics show
that Caesar himself took a very differ-
ent view of the matter from that taken
by certain modern writers who have
attempted to prove that despots are
necessary to the progress of humanity.
Such men as Caesar and Frederic II. of
|Prussia were not to be deceived them-
selves by the shallow sophistries by
which inferior minds have sought to
support evil deeds. Frederic, though,
for form's sake, he might in manifes-
toes insert some idle stories about his
antiquated claim on Silesia, in his
conversation and memoirs pretended
454
[CHAP. XVI.
COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND.
kind of passion, as if he were throwing himself out of reflection
into the future, and uttering what is the usual expression
with which men preface their entry upon desperate enter-
prises and daring, ‘Let the die be cast !” he hurried to
to no more virtue than he had, and
that was little enough. His own
words were: “Ambition, interest,
the desire of making myself talked
about, carried the day; and I decided
for war.” These are the words which
Voltaire, in his Memoirs, says he tran-
scribed from the work as it was when
Frederic showed it to him : “Lambi-
tion, I’intérêt, le désire de faire parler
de moi, l'emportèrent, et la guerre fut
résolue.” In Frederic's work as after-
wards published, the words are some-
what altered:—“Une armée toute prète
à agir, des fonds tout trouvés, et peut-
être l'envie de se faire un nom; tout
cela fut cause de la guerre que le Roi
declara à Marie Thérèse d’Autriche,
Peine de Hongrie et de Bohème.”—
Histoire de mon Temps, tom. i. p. 128,
ed. Berlin, 1788. Woltaire's reflections
on the words as they stood in the origin-
al MS. of Frederic's work, and which
words Voltaire says he made the King
omit when he (Voltaire) subsequently
corrected his works, are well worth
transcribing: “Depuis qu'il y a des
conquérants ou des esprits ardens qui
ont woulu l'être, je crois qu'il est le
premier qui se soit aimsirendu justice.
Jamais homme peutétre n'a plus senti
la raison, et n'a plus écouté ses pas-
sions. Ces assemblages de philoso-
phie et de déréglemens d’imagination
ont toujours composé son caractère.
C'est dommage que je lui aie fait re-
trancher ce passage quandje corrigeai
depuis tous ses ouvrages; un aveu si
rare devait passer a la postérité, et
servir à faire voir sur quoisont fondées
ºp
presques toutes les guerres. Nous
autres gens delettres, poètes, historiens,
déclamateurs d'académie, nous célé-
brons ces beaux exploits: et voilà un
roi quiles fait, et qui les condamne.”
—Mémoires pour servir à la vie de M.
de Voltaire, écrits parlui-même. The
passage as the King has left it in his
history is scarcely less conclusive than
Voltaire's commentary on it. After
dismissing in one word, “incontest-
able,” the nature of his claims upon
Silesia, he proceeds to expatiate upon
the dilapidated state of the Austrian
finances, the general disorder and
weakness of the ministry and the
army, and above all the youth and in-
experience of the Queen Maria. Theresa
and her unprotected condition; and
sums up by stating that he had an
army ready for action, funds provided,
“et peutétre l'envie de se faire un
nom.” It may be said that Caesar, who
was a philosopher as well as Frederic,
also passed a judgment condemning
his own actions, if we can trust Plu-
tarch's account, given above, that he
“enumerated the evils which would
ensue to all mankind from his passage
of the river.” And as Plutarch men-
tions Pollio Asinius (C. Asinius Pollio)
as being present when Caesar entered
into this discussion; and as C. Asinius
Pollio was with Caesar at the Rubicon
and at the Battle of Pharsalia, and
also wrote a history of the civil wars,
which furnished materials for anec-
dotes about Caesar, we may infer that
Plutarch took his account from Pollio's
work—a good authority.
1653.] VANE, SCOT, SYDNEY, HARRISON. 455
cross the river; and thence advancing at full speed he
attacked Ariminum before daybreak and took it.” " -
I have said that before the 20th of April 1653, Cromwell
had committed no overt illegal act, the justification of the
meetings at his lodgings being admitted. This expression
must, however, be understood as applicable to the Govern-
ment as then constituted. For as the Government was
constituted before the expulsion by military force of the
Presbyterian members of the Parliament, known as
“Pride’s Purge,” that expulsion was undoubtedly an illegal
act against the Legislature as then existing. It was
an act, however, partaking rather of the nature of open
war than of treachery. The Presbyterians hated the Inde-
pendents, and would have destroyed them if they had had
the power. The expulsion therefore of the Presbyterians
from the Parliament, by Cromwell and the Independents,
was an act of self-defence. But Cromwell’s expulsion, on
the 20th of April 1653, of the Independents who then
constituted the Parliament, was an act of a totally different
kind; being not an act of self-defence against enemies, but
an act of treachery against friends—against friends who
trusted him, and with whom he had acted for all the
thirteen years during which he had sat with them in that
great Parliament; against friends to whom, even at the
very moment he was preparing to destroy them, “he made
the most solemn professions of fidelity.”” As long as
truth and honour have any existence among mankind, and
till a time come when those who live not merely by pil-
laging or overreaching other people, but by betraying their
friends, shall be powerful enough to make a code of mora-
lity founded on their own practice, there can be small
* Plutarch, C. Caesar, c. 32.
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 451 : 2nd edition, London, 1721.
S
456 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
V.
difficulty in stamping its proper name upon the deed which
Cromwell was now about to do.
For the last time in that antique chapel which formed
their hall of debate, and has become more famous than
any of those temples in which the Roman Senate assembled
in ancient days, sat that renowned assembly. There was
Sir Henry Vane, the wildest of theologians, the subtlest
and yet most practical of statesmen, with long, pale, melan-
choly face, and bright yet somewhat restless look, that to
the superstition of that age might seem to forebode an
unquiet end. There was Thomas Scot, as eloquent and
almost as able as Vane, some of whose speeches, though
only preserved in fragments, are among the most eloquent
in the English language. There was the soldier-philo-
sopher, Algernon Sydney, by his mother’s side the
descendant of Hotspur, as impatient as Hotspur himself
of kingly arrogance and court arts, and like Hotspur pre-
pared to resist them to death; with face thoughtful, like
Vane's and Scot's, yet different from theirs in a certain
stern, dauntless, and commanding expression, which
seemed to unite the high, fierce, determined spirit of a
republican soldier with the pride of a nobility of twenty
generations. There too, with tall military figure, aquiline
features, and bright black eyes, in which the enthusiasm
that sparkled at times, and often seemed to slumber under
his long dark eyelashes, gave something wild, striking, and
even noble to his aspect, was the “bravest of the brave,”
Thomas Harrison, who, though not, like Sydney, possessing
any pretensions to chivalry of lineage, carried his daring
as a soldier to the most chivalrous extent; and whose re-
ligious enthusiasm took a wilder flight even than Wane's,
and on this day made him the dupe to aid in digging a
pitfall that was to be his own grave. For all those four
1653.] THE TWENTIETH OF APRIL, 1653. 457
men the deed that was to be done that day by their ancient
friend and comrade was to lead to a terrible end. For
them there will be “a darker departure” than fell to the
lot of Hampden, and Pym, and Ireton. For them “the
war-drum is muffled, and black is the bier.” For them,
amid the frantic shouts of a fickle multitude for the resto-
ration of the Stuarts, the “death-bell is tolling,” that is
to herald them to the scaffold, which is destined to be
their stormy and agonised pathway to the grave. Yet
of all four—the statesmen and the soldiers—the deaths
were to be equally without fear, and without a shadow of
mistrust in their great Cause—their “good old Cause ’’—
for which they had lived and fought and laboured, and for
which they died, or, to use their own words, which they
“ sealed with their blood.”
Early on the morning of the 20th of April, 1653, White-
lock and Widdrington went again, according to appoint-
ment, to Cromwell’s lodgings, where there were but few
Parliament men, and a few officers of the army. A point
was again raised which had been debated the preceding
night, “whether forty persons, or about that number of
Parliament men and officers of the army, should be nomi-
nated by the Parliament, and empowered for the managing
the affairs of the Commonwealth, till a new Parliament
should meet, and so the present Parliament to be forth-
with dissolved.” Whitelock says he was against this pro-
posal, and the more, fearing lest he might be one of these
forty, who he thought would be in a desperate condition
after the Parliament should be dissolved ; but others were
very ambitious to be of this number and Council, and to
be invested with this exorbitant power.” During this
| Whitelock's Memorials, p. 554: London, 1732. 2 Ibid.
458 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND.
[CHAP. XVI.
debate Cromwell, being informed that the Parliament was
sitting, and “that it was hoped they would put a period
to themselves, which would be the most honourable disso-
lution for them,” immediately broke up the meeting. The
members of the Parliament who were with him then left
him at his lodgings, went to the House, and “found them,”
says Whitelock, “in debate of an act which would oc-
casion other meetings of them again, and prolong their
sitting.”.” -
This statement of Whitelock, who was present—
appears at first sight to be at variance with the evidence
of no less than four authorities: Cromwell’s Declaration,
the Memoirs of Ludlow, (who, though not present, expressly
says he had his information from Major-General Harrison,)
the Journal of the Earl of Leicester, (who received his in-
formation from his son Algernon Sydney, who was present,)
and a speech in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of Sir
Arthur Haselrig, who was also present. The variation may
be accounted for by the supposition that the House was for
some time in debate on the Bill for settling the claims of
* Whitelock's Memorials, p. 554:
London, 1723.
* Ibid. After the record of the pro-
ceedings of the 19th of April, 1653,
in the printed Journals there occurs
this note: “Here follows an entry,
which is expunged; and against it, in
the margin, is written this memoran-
dum, ‘This entry was expunged by
order of Parliament, January 7, 1659.”
The Journal of that day, January 7,
1659, contains the following passage:
“Whereas this House do find an entry
in the Journal-Book of April 20,
1653, in these words: ‘This day his
Excellency the Lord-General dissolved
this Parliament, which was done
without consent of Parliament,' Re-
solved, that the Parliament doth de-
clare, that the same is a forgery. Re-
solved, that Mr. Scobell be sent for
to the bar of the House.” Mr. Sco-
bell, on his appearing and being
shown the entry, acknowledged that
it was his own handwriting, and
that he did it without the direction of
any person whatever. The House then
ordered the entry to be expunged out
of the Journal, and referred it to a
Committee to consider whether the
then late Act of Indemnity extended to
pardon that offence.—Commons’ Jour-
mals, January 7, 1659.
1653.] CROMWELL’S 1NCONSISTENCY. 459
the adventurers for Ireland, and then returned to the great
question of finally passing the Bill for their own dissolu-
tion, which question was ready to be put. Harrison after-
wards told Ludlow—“The question for passing the Bill
being to be put, Cromwell said to him (Harrison), “This
is the time, I must do it.’” And Haselrig’s words are,
“The question was putting for it, when Our General stood
up and stopped the question.”
The facts then we may conclude, on the testimony of
four witnesses, Cromwell, Harrison, Algernon Sydney, and
Haselrig, were these. The Bill for the dissolution, with
the amendments, was ready to be put to the final vote.
But before proceeding to that vote the House went into a
debate on a Bill for settling the claims of the adventurers
for Ireland.
Now there starts up here one of those contradictions so
difficult to comprehend, much less to explain, in the cha-
racters of such men as Cromwell. First, the information
brought to Cromwell of the Parliament’s having entered
into debate on new business, and thereby raising pretexts
for continuing their sitting, affords Cromwell a pretext
for getting into a rage with the Parliament for not putting
an end to their sitting. And secondly, when, on going to
the House, he found they were actually putting the question
for passing the Bill for their dissolution, he makes that a
new pretext for getting into a new rage. Let those who
claim for this man the perfection of human intelligence
and human virtue reconcile these contradictions if they
Call.
“Thereupon,” continues Whitelock, “Colonel Ingoldsby
went back to Cromwell, and told him what the House were
doing ; who was so enraged thereat, expecting they should
have meddled with no other business but putting a period
460 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
to their own sitting without more delay, that he presently
commanded some of the officers of the army to fetch
a party of soldiers, with whom he marched to the
EIouse.” " - -
It is remarkable that Whitelock, who was present, should
have made a statement so inaccurate as that contained in
the concluding words of the sentence * which I have just
quoted down to the word “House.” The sentence in
Whitelock concludes thus, “ and led a file of musketeers
in with him ; the rest he placed at the door of the House,
and in the lobby before it.” Two of the witnesses already
mentioned, Algernon Sydney and Major-General Harrison,
distinctly state that he did not lead either a file or files
* Whitelock's Memorials, p. 554.
* It has been proved that the editor
of Whitelock's Embassy to Sweden
omitted some most important passages
(see Aysc. MS. Brit. Mus. 4991, p. 206,
and Brodie's Hist. Vol. ii. pp. 16, note,
and pp. 43, 44, and note). There are
some circumstances in Whitelock's
account of Cromwell's expulsion of
the Parliament that seem to lead to
the supposition that the passage has
been tampered with. Besides the
gross inaccuracy mentioned in the
text, which could hardly have been
made by a man who was present, un-
less he had lost his senses and was
paralysed by fear, the man who has
shown this confusion of mind is repre-
sented as having also the folly to say,
“And among all the Parliament men,
of whom many wore swords, and
would sometimes brag high, not one
man offered to draw his sword against
Cromwell, or to make the least resist-
ance against him; but allofthem tamely
departed the house.” Ludlow, who was
not there—being in Ireland at the
time, but who received an exact account
of what occurred from Harrison, and
others who were present—and Alger-
nón Sydney, who was present, knew too
well, as soldiers, the folly of resistance
with the sword at such a time to make
any remark like this of Whitelock's,
which resembles the silly and malicious
imputations of cowardice which Hyde
and Mrs. Hutchinson are so fond of
making. Whitelock's remark is made
in the spirit of Jacobitism, and has
been since repeated by Jacobite
writers. For there is no mode so easy
of blackening a man or a body of men
as the charge of cowardice. How
little the mean reproach here made
was merited in the case of Vane, Scot,
and Sydney, was signally proved by
that fortitude which deliberately pre-
ferred honourable death to dishonour-
able submission, a fortitude beyond
the comprehension or credence of such
men as Clarendon and Whitelock.
1653.] CROMWELL INSULTS THE PARLIAMENT. 461
of musketeers “in with him.” Neither did the Parliament
know that he had any musketeers outside the door of the
House till he called them in.
As Algernon Sydney told the story to his father,
“Cromwell came into the House, clad in plain black
clothes, with grey worsted stockings, and sat down as he
used to do in an ordinary place.” After sitting and
hearing the debate for some time, he called to Major-
General Harrison, who was on the other side of the House,
to come to him, and told him that “he judged the Parlia-
ment ripe for a dissolution, and this to be the time for doing
it.” The Major-General answered, “as he since told me,”
says Ludlow *—“Sir, the work is very great and dangerous,
therefore I desire you seriously to consider of it before
you engage in it.” “You say well,” replied the General,
and thereupon sat still for about a quarter of an hour.
Then the question for passing the Bill being to be put, he
said again to Major-General Harrison, “This is the time,
I must do it.” Then suddenly standing up he made a
speech, wherein he loaded the Parliament with the vilest
reproaches,” charging them with not having a heart to do
anything for the public good, with having espoused the
corrupt interest of presbytery and the lawyers, who were
the supporters of tyranny and oppression, accusing them
of an intention to perpetuate themselves in power, had
they not been forced to the passing of this Act, which he
1 The Journal of the Earl of Leices- put off his hat, and spake. At the first,
ter, p. 139, in Sydney Papers, edited and for a good while, he spake to the
by R. W. Blencowe, A.M.: London, commendation of the Parliament for
1825. their pains and care of the public
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 455: good; but afterwards he changed his
2nd edition, London, 1721. style, told them of their injustice, de-
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 456: lays of justice, self-interest, and other
2nd edition, London, 1721.-Lord Lei- faults.”—Journal of the Earl of Leices-
cester says, “After a while, he rose up, ter, pp. 139, 140.
462 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
affirmed they designed never to observe ; " and thereupon told
them, “that the Lord had done with them, and had chosen
other instruments for the carrying on His work, that were
more worthy.” All this he spoke with so much passion,
as if he had been distracted. The cant which introduces
the name of the Deity on all occasions, a cant which is
offensive enough in the ordinary saints of that time, is
infinitely more offensive in the mouth of a man who uses
it as a cloak for his own rapacious self-aggrandisement.
It is like an attempt to invest the mortal tyrant with the
attributes of Immortality and Omnipotence.
Sir Peter Wentworth stood up to answer him, and said
“ that this was the first time that ever he had heard such
unbecoming language given to the Parliament, and that it
was the more horrid in that it came from their servant,
and their servant whom they had so highly trusted and
obliged.” But as he was going on, Cromwell stept into
the midst of the House, where he said, “Come, come, I
will put an end to your prating.” Then walking up and
down the House like a madman, and kicking the ground
with his feet, he cried out, “You are no Parliament; I
say you are no Parliament; I will put an end to your
sitting; call them in, call them in.” Thereupon Harrison
went out and presently brought in Lieutenant-Colonel
Worsley, who commanded the General’s own regiment of
foot, with five or six files of musqueteers, “about 20 or
30” says Lord Leicester, “with their musquets; ” ” which
Sir Henry Vane observing from his place, said aloud,
* Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 436. referred to are false.
—The words which I print in italics * Lord Leicester's Journal, p. 140.
are another proof, in addition to those “Six hommes font une file.”—Mé-
I will give presently, that Cromwell's moires de Montecuculi, I. ii. 24.
assertions respecting the Act here
1653.] CROMWELL ExPELS THE PARLIAMENT. 463
“This is not honest, yea, it is against morality and com-
mon honesty.”" Then Cromwell fell a railing at him,
crying out with a loud voice, “O Sir Henry Vane, Sir
Henry Vane, the Lord deliver me from Sir Henry Wane!”
Then looking upon one of the members, he said, “There
sits a drunkard; ” and giving much reviling language to
others, he commanded the mace to be taken away, saying,
“Here, take away this fool’s bauble !”
Cromwell, then, pointing to the Speaker in his chair, said
to Harrison, “Fetch him down.” Harrison went to the
Speaker, and said that, “seeing things were brought to
this pass, it would not be convenient for him to remain
there.” The Speaker, according to Ludlow,” answered that
“he would not come down unless he were forced.” But
according to Lord Leicester, the Speaker sat still, and said
nothing. “Take him down,” said Cromwell. Then Harri-
son went and pulled the Speaker by the gown, and he came
down.” “It happened that day,” continues Lord Leicester,
“that Algernon Sydney sat next to the Speaker on the right
hand. The General said to Harrison, “Put him out.”
Harrison spake to Sydney to go out ; but he said he would
not go out, and sat still. The General said again, ‘Put
him out.” Then Harrison and Worsley put their hands
upon Sydney’s shoulders, as if they would force him to go
out. Then he rose and went towards the door.” "
Cromwell then addressed himself to the members of the
House, who were, says Ludlow, between 80 and 100, and
| Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 45: says (p. 141), “Then the General went
2nd edition, London, 1721. to the table where the mace lay, which
2 Ludlow says (vol. ii. p. 457) used to be carried before the Speaker,
Cromwell, said, “What shall we do and said, ‘Take away these baubles.”
with this bauble? Here, take it away.” “Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 457.
Whitelock says (p. 554), “He bid one * Lord Leicester's Journal, p, 140.
of his soldiers to take away that fool's “Ibid. pp. 140, 141.
bauble, the mace.” Lord Leiceste
464 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND, [CHAP. XVI,
said to them, “It’s you that have forced me to this, for I
have sought the Lord night and day, that He would rather
slay me than put me upon the doing of this work.” "
“Cromwell,” continues Ludlow, “ having acted this trea-
cherous and impious part, Ordered the guard to see the
House cleared of all the members, and then seized upon the
records that were there, and at Mr. Scobell’s house. After
which he went to the clerk, and, snatching the Act of
Dissolution, which was ready to pass, out of his hand, he
put it under his cloak, and having commanded the doors
to be locked up, went away to Whitehall.”” *
Lord Leicester says that, as the members were going out,
the General said to young Sir Henry Vane, calling him by
his name, that he might have prevented this extraordinary
course; but he was a juggler, and had not so much as
common honesty.” Lord Leicester prefaces this anecdote
with the words “they say,” and it is not mentioned either
by Ludlow or Whitelock. It is probable enough, however,
that Cromwell said something of the kind by way of retort
to Vane's exclamation, “This is not honest; yea, it is
against morality and common honesty.” Which of the
two, Vane or Cromwell, was the juggler may be left to
the judgment of impartial posterity.
It has been shown that Cromwell, on this 20th of April
1653, first got into a passion when he was informed that
the Parliament were occupied with other business than
the Act for their dissolution; and secondly, that he got
Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. gated Cromwell to take the power into
457, 458: 2nd edition, London, 1721. his own hands, well understanding
* Ibid. p. 458.-‘‘This villanous that he would soon be necessitated
attempt,” adds Ludlow, “was much to make peace with them upon what
encouraged by the ambassadors lately terms they should think fit.”—Ibid.
arrived from Holland with instruc- * Lord Leicester's Journal, p. 141.
tions to conclude a peace, who insti-
1653.] DEPARTURE OF THE GREAT PARLIAMENT. 465
into a passion with them when they were going to put
the question for finally passing the Bill for their dissolu-
tion. If such conduct have something of the appearance of
madness, it is madness with method in it. To do an act
of treachery and perfidy with a burst of imperious anger,
instead of doing it with the command of temper which is
usually observed to belong to treacherous and perfidious
natures, may give to such an act an appearance of daring,
of grandeur, of magnanimity, which, false though it be,
may yet be able to dazzle the imagination and mislead the
judgment. I do not say that Cromwell had nicely calcu-
lated this effect of his passion on this occasion. I think
it more probable that he found the work he had set himself
to do disagreeable, and that he took refuge from the
reproaches of his own mind by putting himself irto a
passion—a very common proceeding with many men. I
also agree with Hume, that while Cromwell could descend
to employ “the most profound dissimulation, the most
oblique and refined artifice,” he was “carried by his
natural temper to magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an
imperious and domineering policy.” A man of this
temper of mind is apt to attempt to indemnify himself for
the restraint he has found it convenient to put at one
time on the predominant part of his nature, by giving at
another time the loose rein to his imperious passions; and,
when he suddenly turns round upon his former friends,
and ruins them and their cause, to seek to justify his deeds
to himself, if not to others, by heaping on those, to whom
he had just before given the highest commendations and
made the most solemn professions of fidelity, every term
of reproach and contempt which a scurrilous vocabulary
can supply.
It must have been a strange sight to see the members
WOL. II. H H
466 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
of that great Parliament walking away in groups of two or
three, after this extraordinary scene, from the old Gothic
chapel, which had witnessed their labours and their
triumphs, and which, through all the ages of its famous
history, has never before or since held such men as they.
To the superior spirits among them—to Wane, to Scot,
to Algernon Sydney, whose knowledge of the past history
of mankind would give them some foresight of the future,
and whom the deed done by Cromwell that day was, at no
very distant time, to send to the scaffold'—it must have
been manifest that their career as statesmen was ended;
that never more for them could the Parliament or the
Council of State be the great arena, where they had once
so powerfully contended for liberty and empire.
Cromwell, having thus settled to his own satisfaction
the expulsion of the Parliament, returned to Whitehall,
where he found the Council of Officers in debate con-
cerning this weighty affair ; and informed them that he
lad done it, and that they needed not to trouble themselves
any further about it. But Colonel Okey and some others,
officers of the army, who did not come under John
Lilburne’s designation of “creature colonels,” repaired to
the General, to desire satisfaction in that proceeding,
conceiving that the way they were now going tended to
ruin and confusion. “To these,” says Ludlow, “having
not yet taken off his mask, but pretending to more honesty
and self-denial than ever, he professed himself to do much
more good, and with more expedition, than could be
expected from the Parliament; while professions from him
* I think that, but for this deed of faith in the honesty of the Indepen-
Cromwell—which not only ruined the dents—the Stuarts would never have
cause for which the Parliamentary been able to return.
armies had fought, but destroyed all
1653.] THE COUNCIL OF STATE DEPART. 4.67
put most of them to silence, and moved them to a resolu-
tion of waiting for a further discovery of his design, before
they would proceed to a breach and division from him.
But Colonel Okey, being jealous that the end would be
bad, because the means were such as made them justly
suspected of hypocrisy, enquired of Colonel Desborough
what his [Cromwell's] meaning was to give such high
commendations to the Parliament, when he endeavoured
to dissuade the officers of the army from petitioning them
for a dissolution, and, so short a time after, to eject them
with so much scorn and contempt ; who had no other
answer to make, but that, if ever he drolled in his life, he
had drolled then.” "
In the afternoon of that same day, the 20th of April
1653, in the morning of which he had thus expelled the
Parliament, Cromwell came to the Council of State, who
were assembled at the usual place of meeting in White-
hall. Cromwell was accompanied by those two officers
whose concurrence, as has been shown, he had taken such
care to procure—Lambert and Harrison. On his entrance,
Cromwell said: “Gentlemen, if you are met here as
private persons, you shall not be disturbed; but if as a
Council of State, this is no place for you; and since you
can’t but know what was done at the House in the morn-
ing, so take notice, that the Parliament is dissolved.” To
this Serjeant Bradshaw answered : “Sir, we have heard
what you did at the House in the morning, and before
many hours all England will hear of it. But, Sir, you are
Tudlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. Order Book of the Council of State,
495, 460: 2nd edition, London, 1721. Wednesday, March 23, 1653, MS. State
* Bradshaw was not President of Paper Office. The Earl of Salisbury
the Council for this month. “That had been President of the Council for
Mr. Bond be appointed President of the month preceding—namely, from
the Council for the month ensuing.”— February 23 to March 23.
H H 2
468 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. xvi.
mistaken to think that the Parliament is dissolved; for
no power under Heaven can dissolve them but themselves;
therefore take you notice of that.” Something more,
according to Ludlow, was said to the same purpose by
Scot, Haselrig, and Love; and then “the Council of
State, perceiving themselves to be under the same violence,
departed.”"
When a man of Cromwell’s abilities sets to work to give
a particular colour to any transaction, it is no easy matter
to discover the true colour of that transaction. Cromwell's
strongest point against the Parliament was his assertion
that their Bill for a new Parliament, which they were pass-
ing through its last stages when he expelled them from
their house, contained clauses by which “these present
members were to sit, and to be made up by others chosen,
and by themselves approved of.” These words are from
a “Narrative of the Manner of the Parliament’s being Dis-
missed,” published on the day after the expulsion of the
Parliament, the 21st of April, which the compilers of the new
“Parliamentary History ‘’designate as “of equal authority
with that of the Journals themselves; being published at
the very time of action, and licensed by Mr. Scobell, Clerk
of the House.”” But the compilers of the “Parliamentary
History,” in making this assertion, must have forgotten the
vast difference between the position of Mr. Scobell on the
20th of April 1653, and his position on the following day,
the 21st of April 1653. As Antony in Shakspéare’s play
said of Caesar, we may truly say of that great Parliament:
“But yesterday their word might have stood against the
world; and now none so poor to do them reverence.” The
“Clerk of the House ’’ was no longer their servant, but the
Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 461 : * Parl. Hist, vol. iii. pp. 1381,
2nd edition, London, 1721. 1382,
1653.] IF CROMWELL’S ASSERTIONS WERE TRUE, 469
servant of their destroyer; and in that capacity he could
do, and did, his part to poison the very fountain-head of
history.
I believe, as firmly as I believe my own existence, that at
this stage of his career Cromwell made as much use of
falsehood as his creature Monk afterwards did, when he
was taking measures to sell his country for a dukedom
and a large sum of money. My belief is grounded on a
Yet,
he took such precautions in this case, that it is impossible
to prove that the Bill did not contain what he asserted that
it contained ; for he seized it, and carried it off with him.
to his own house, and it was never produced afterwards.
The words quoted above, if they mean anything, mean that
the present Parliament, under colour of giving the people
vast mass of evidence, long and carefully weighed."
a new and free Parliament, meant to perpetuate their own
Now this is most distinctly denied by two wit-
nesses, both of them credible and well-informed: the one,
power.
' As one of innumerable instances of
the opinions formed, by those who knew
him personally, of Cromwell's honesty
and veracity, I give the following:
“Amongst these was a cornet, whose
name was Day, and who, being charged
with saying that Cromwell was a
rogue and a traitor, confessed the
words; and, to justify himself, said
that Cromwell had affirmed, in the
presence of himself and divers other
officers, that if he did oppress the con-
scientious, or betray the liberties of
the people, or not take away tithes by
a certain time now past, they should
then have liberty to say he was a
rogue or traitor. He moved, there-
fore, that he might be permitted to
produce his witnesses, who were then
present, to the particulars before-men-
tioned; but the matter was so ordered,
'that he and some others were fined
and imprisoned for their pretended
misdemeanours.”—Dudlow's Memoirs,
vol. ii. p. 605: 2nd edition, London,
1721. That Cromwell was quite con-
scious of the distrust with which his
assertions were received by those he
addressed, is proved by the expressions
with which he interlarded his dis-
course, such as, “This is very true that
I tell you, God knows I lie not / "
a form of words certainly not indica-
tive of a man of truthful habits—a
phraseology now in use among the
lowest and least veracious members of
society. A man of habitual veracity
and honour would no more think of
using such asseverations, than an
honourable matron would think it
necessary to affirm that she was “an
honest woman.”
470 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
General Ludlow, a member of that Parliament; and the
other Mrs. Hutchinson, the wife of Colonel Hutchinson,
also a member of it.
Falsehood, in the shape of calumny, has ever been and
will ever be one of the most powerful weapons of those
who, while they pursue their selfish ends with the
ravenous fury of wild beasts or savages, find themselves
compelled to pay some deference to the public opinion
of their age and country. When you have done any
man a deep and grievous wrong, it may appear a duty
you owe to yourself and your family, to blacken the cha-
racter of the man you have injured, so that what you have
done may have a chance of appearing not wrong, but right.
In the beginning of that 17th century, a very remarkable
example of this mode of proceeding occurred in the affair
which James I. called the “Gowrie Conspiracy.” The Earl
of Gowrie and his brother, Alexander Ruthven, were mur-
dered by King James, who published his own account of
the matter, in which he declared that he had acted in his
own defence; and everything in the shape of a defence of
the Earl of Gowrie and his brother was so effectually de-
stroyed, that not a single copy can now be met with."
Cromwell, in his “Declaration of the Grounds and Rea-
sons for thus Dissolving the Parliament by Force,” dated
“Whitehall, April 22, 1653,” asserted that “ those persons
of honour and integrity amongst them, who had eminently
appeared for God and the public good, were rendered of
no further use in Parliament, than, by meeting with a cor-
rupt party, to give them countenance to carry on their
ends, and for effecting the desire they had of perpetuating
themselves in the supreme government; for which pur-
pose the said party long opposed, and frequently declared
See Pitcairn's Criminal Trials of Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 209, 210.
&=
1653.] AND COULD HAVE BEEN PROVED, 471
themselves against having, a new representative: and
when they saw themselves necessitated to take that Bill
into consideration, they resolved to make use of it to
recruit the House with persons of the same spirit and
temper, thereby to perpetuate their own sitting.”
This passage partakes, in a large measure, of the darkness
that characterises Cromwell's utterances, whether written
or spoken, when he had a case to make out. First he
admits that there were “persons of honour and integrity
amongst them.” Then he says that “those persons of
honour and integrity were rendered of no further use in
Parliament, than, by meeting with a corrupt party, to
give them countenance to carry on their ends, and for
effecting the desire they had of perpetuating themselves in
the supreme government.” The meaning I suppose is,
though the grammar is in a state of chaos, that the per-
sons of honour and integrity were made use of by a corrupt
party as a cloak to deceive the nation. And in the next
passage “the said party’ means the “corrupt party”
before mentioned. -
Now it certainly appears, from the Journals of the 14th
November 1651, that when the question was put, “That it
is now a convenient time to declare a certain time for the
continuance of the Parliament, beyond which it shall not
sit,” there was a large proportion of members, out of a
house of 96—in one division 46 to 50, in another 47 to 49—
who were against entertaining the question at all. In
both the divisions Cromwell was one of the tellers for the
Yeas. It was, however, four days after, on the 18th of
November, ultimately “Resolved, that the time for the
continuance of this Parliament, beyond which they resolve
not to sit, shall be the 3rd day of November 1654.” And,
* Parl. Hist. vol. iii. p. 1387.
472 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
by a subsequent resolution, the 3rd of November 1653
was appointed, instead of the 3rd of November 1654.
It may be inferred from this, that the above-mentioned
minority of 46 or 47 constituted the “corrupt party,” re-
ferred to by Cromwell in the passage just quoted of his
“Declaration ” of 22nd April 1653. So far, then, Cromwell
had a colour of truth to support his assertions. But this
colour will not go far. For his assertion implies that this
“corrupt party’ was a majority, and not, as the Journals
show in the above-cited divisions, a minority, though un-
doubtedly a large minority. And therefore that assertion,
that the “corrupt party “ had so framed their Bill for
electing a new Parliament, as to render it an instrument
for perpetuating themselves, is unsupported by evidence.
If Cromwell could have proved the truth of his assertions,
why did he not publish a copy of the Bill? He could not
prove the truth of his assertions, and he took good care that
the Bill should never be forthcoming. The Bill had not
been printed or even engrossed. “Cromwell,” as Mr.
Forster says, “ had seized the only copy in existence on
the day of the dissolution; had carried it himself, under
his cloak, to his own house at Whitehall; and was never
afterwards known to refer to it in any way.” It was to
be expected that, partly from carelessness, partly from
bias against the Rump, writers such as the compilers of
the “Parliamentary History” should, as has been shown,
assume as true Cromwell’s assertions respecting the Bill
which he seized, and never produced afterwards. But it is
rather surprising that Mr. Forster, who has investigated
* Forster's Life of Oliver Cromwell, visions of the Bill, which were sub-
vol. ii. p. 75 : London, 1839. — Mr. stantially the same as those of Ireton's
Forster, in his “Life of Vane” (pp. Bill, called “An Agreement of the
158—162), has collected from the People of England,” described in the
Journals of the House the main pro- First Volume of this History, pp. 27–30.
1653.] WHY DID HE NOT PRINT THE BILL 7 473
this subject with great care and ability, should have ad-
mitted, or taken for granted, Cromwell's assertion that the
Bill provided for the re-election, or for the continuance
without re-election, of the members of the present Parlia-
ment.
Besides the reasons I have already assigned for saying
that Cromwell’s assertion was not proved, and that his ob-
ject was to make it seem that the Bill contained such
provisions without being able to prove it, though, had it
been true, he could have proved it at once, by printing
and publishing the Bill, it is a significant circumstance,
that while the semi-official “ Narrative,” already re-
ferred to, issued on the 21st of April, asserts in positive
words that “by the said Act these present members were
to sit and to be made up by others chosen, and by them-
selves approved of,” the official “Declaration,” issued on
the 22nd of April, carefully avoids any such positive asser-
tion, using more vague words, “recruit the House with
persons of the same spirit and temper, thereby to perpetu-
ate their own sitting.” The craft of Cromwell is very
conspicuous in this distinction. He might, and would of
course, disown the semi-official paper when it suited
him so to do. The words of the official paper, which
he could not disown, were so chosen that they might be
explained to mean, either that the present members were
to continue to sit, and that persons of the same spirit and
temper were to be added to them, to make up the full
number of 400; or that the present members were either
not to sit at all in the next House, or were to take their
chance of re-election with the new members who were to
form the new Parliament. .
Add to all this evidence against the assertion of their
destroyer, that the Parliament meant to perpetuate them-
474 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
selves, the solemn declaration of Thomas Scot, one of their
most illustrious members. In a speech made in Richard
Cromwell’s Parliament, Thomas Scot said: “The Dutch
war came on. If it had pleased God and his Highness to
have let that little power of a Parliament sit a little
longer, when Hannibal is ad portas, something must be
done extra leges, we intended to have gone off with a good
savour, and provided for a succession of Parliaments; but we
stayed to end the Dutch war.”
“Thus,” says a hostile writer, “by their own mercenary
servants, and not a sword drawn in their defence, fell
the haughty and victorious Rump, whose mighty actions
will scarcely find belief in future generations.” A more
modern hostile writer declares he knows not in what eyes
are tears at their departure, except it be their own; and
then he approvingly quotes the assertion of his veracious
we did not hear a dog
bark at their going.” It would, I apprehend, be some-
what difficult to detect a dog in the act of barking at the
hanging of “my Lord-General ” himself, and all his para-
man-god, “my Lord-General,” “
sites in One rope.
Yet let not this renowned Parliament die unheard.
And in the vindication of the purity of its intentions, and
of the respect due to its memory—by such men as Scot
and Vane, who “sealed the cause with their blood,” and
declared upon the scaffold, in the last words they uttered,
“that it was a cause not to be repented of,”—there is a
tone of deep yet manly sorrow, that must command the
respect of every candid and generous mind. There is too,
* This speech, which was made in 1656–1659,” edited by John Towill
Richard Cromwell's Parliament, is re- Rutt.
ported in the “Diary of Thomas Burton, * Roger Coke's Detection of the
Esq., Member in the Parliaments of Court and State of England, vol. ii.
Oliver and Richard Cromwell, from p. 30.
1653.] END OF THE COMMON WEALTH. 475
in the words of those men, all the solemnity of death; for
events were already looming in no distant future, which
foreboded to them a dark and inevitable fate. Neverthe-
less, their courage quailed not; and in their, I might say,
dying words"—even, as it were, from the very ashes of that
great assembly, which such men as they were to make im-
mortal—there “flashed forth a stream of heroic rays.”
Ay, these are the true heroes; though libraries may be
written, and temples dedicated, to the Moloch-worship of
successful renegades, liars, and robbers!
Thus ended that Government called “The Common-
wealth,” after a duration of four years and nearly three
Though English historians have extended the
name of Commonwealth to the military despotism of
Cromwell which succeeded, and have thus given to Crom-
well all the credit due to the good government of the states-
men of the Commonwealth, and to the statesmen of the
Commonwealth all the discredit due to the bad government
months.
of Cromwell, the original records of the proceedings of both
remain, to show to all ages the vast difference between
that body of men who constituted THE COUNCIL OF STATE,
and that body of men who constituted CROMWELL’s Coun-
CIL OF STATE.
1 Scot's last words in Parliament—
when some of the Presbyterians, who
were in the reassembled Long Parlia-
ment, before its final destruction by
Monk, moved that before they sepa-
rated they should bear their witness
against the execution of the King—
were that, “though he knew not where
to hide his head at that time, yet he
durst not refuse to own, that not only
his hand but his heart also was in it.”
—Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 864:
2nd edition, London, 1721. The
words, as reported in Burton's Diary,
which seem to refer to the same occa-
sion, are these : “I would be content
it should be set upon my monument—
if it were my last act, Iown it—I was
one of the King's judges. I hope it
shall not be said of us, as of the
Romans once, “O homines ad servitu-
tem parati ' ' " Vane and Algernon
Sydney, though neither of them ap-
proved of the King's execution, or had
either “hand or heart in that affair,”
manifested the same lofty and in-
trepid spirit before their judges and
on the scaffold.
476 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
The last meeting recorded in the Order Book of THE
Council of State, is on Friday, the 15th of April 1653.
No business of any particular importance is recorded in the
minutes; nor does anything appear in the minutes, giving
the least sign or foreboding of the catastrophe of Wednes-
day next, the 20th of April. There were eighteen members
of the Council present, including Vane, Scot, the Earl of
Salisbury, and Sir Arthur Haselrig. There is no record pre-
served of the meeting in the afternoon of the 20th of April.
And so closes the last Order Book of the Council of State.
The first meetings of Cromwell’s Council of State, begin-
ning a new Order Book, like the former Order Books in all
outward signs, is on Friday the 29th of April 1653. The
members present of this new Council of Saints—who were,
as poor Harrison dreamt, to initiate the Millennium—were
the Lord-General Cromwell, Major-General Lambert,
Major-General Harrison, Mr. Carew, Colonel Bennet,
Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Stapeley, Mr. Strickland. Of
these eight, six were military men. This seems to be the
general proportion. Thus on Tuesday, the 3rd of May 1653,
the members present were Major-General Lambert, Major-
General Harrison, Mr. Carew, Major-General Desbrough
[Desborough, Cromwell's brother-in-law], Mr. Strickland,
Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Stapeley. This, therefore, was
a mere barrack-room Council—a Council of what John
Tilburne called the “creature colonels,” whom Oliver,
assuming the style royal, might call “creatures of our
own,” as Queen Elizabeth called the Earl of Leicester
“a creature of our own.” John Lilburne proved only too
true a prophet. Never more were Vane," Scot, and Sydney
to appear in that Council-room. There was no affinity
" As to the composition of Crom- fusal to be a member of it, see note 1,
well's Council of State, and Vane's re- p. 479.
1653.] CROMWELL’S COUNCIL OF STATE. 477
between the nature of Oliver Cromwell and theirs. But
there was a strong affinity between Cromwell’s nature and
that of Monk, and of another man whose name soon after
appears in the list of the members of Cromwell's Council
of State. The name of that other man is an omen and, as
it were, a history of what were to be the consequences of
the grand perfidy of Cromwell. The name is entered on
the list thus—“Sir A. A. Cooper.”
It was of such men, no doubt, as Cromwell, and Monk,
and Cooper, that Sir Henry Vane was thinking when, in
his prayer with his family and friends, in his chamber on
the morning of his execution, he used these words—“Oh
what abjuring of light, what treachery, what meanness of
spirit, has appeared in this day !”.'
The three men above mentioned may be designated as a
triumvirate of traitors, who carried the successful practice
of treachery and falsehood to a height sufficient to strike
the common herd of their imitators at Once with admira–
tion and despair. And so long had this successful career
lasted, with that one of the three who survived the others,
Cooper or Shaftesbury (for he had rotted into a peer with
that title), that it might really have seemed that the only
character to be venerated on earth, where success has so
much to do with veneration, was that of an adroit practi-
tioner of treachery and falsehood. This man had been a
traitor to every party, but, up to a certain point, his treach-
eries had always prospered. “Whether it were accident
or sagacity,” says Lord Macaulay, “he had timed his
| The Tryal of Sir Henry Vane, Kt. interrupted an overruled by the Court)
At the King's Bench, Westminster, and his Bill of Exception. With other
June the 2nd and 6th, 1662; together occasional speeches, &c. Also his
with what he intended to have spoken speech and prayer on the Scaffold.
the day of his sentence (June 11) for Small 4to. Printed in the year 1662,
arrest of judgment (had he not been p. 83.
478 COMMON WEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP, XVI.
desertions in such a manner, that fortune seemed to go to
and fro with him from side to side.” "
Lord Macaulay has described with great force the cha-
racter of Shaftesbury—with greater force than either Butler
or Dryden; though the character of Shaftesbury, while still
living, had been drawn by them, “two of the greatest
writers of the age—by Butler with characteristic brilliancy
of wit, by Dryden with even more than characteristic
energy and loftiness, by both with all the inspiration of
hatred.” And the character of Shaftesbury was a sort
of archetype of the characters of the politicians who ap-
peared in England, not only after the restoration of
Charles II., but after the expulsion of the Long Parliament
by Cromwell. From that time, if we except Blake—who
continued to fight the foreign enemies of England, but
who never, in any sense, became the creature of Cromwell”
—none of the great spirits, whose fixedness of purpose,
intensity of will, and fierce yet single-minded and
unselfish enthusiasm, had fought the great fight for
liberty in the hall of debate as well as on the field of
battle, had borne down before them the opposition alike
of adverse opinions and of hostile armies, and extorted
even from enemies a reluctant admiration, ever more
acted with Cromwell. Between him and them a deep
and impassable gulf had been fixed. Henceforth he
must seek for other instruments of his will; for those
who had been his coadjutors
* Macaulay's Essay on Sir William
Temple.
2 Ibid.
* Neither Blake himself, nor his
brother Benjamin, nor his nephew
Robert, ever set their hands to the
declaration of approval of Cromwell's
expulsion of the Parliament, to which
in the advancement of the
Cromwell obtained the signatures of
Deane, Monk, Penn, and many of the
captains of the ships.-See the declara-
tion in Granville Penn's Memorials
of Sir Wm. Penn, vol. i. pp. 489–
491 : London, 1833. See also Dixon's
Robert Blake, p. 247: 8vo. edition,
London, 1852.
1653.] CHARACTER OF THE COMMONWEALTH MEN. 479
great work of delivering England from civil and religious
tyranny—from the tyranny of Laud, as well as from the
tyranny of Strafford and Charles Stuart—would never sub-
mit to be the tools of their treacherous comrade, who now
sought to substitute a tyrant under the name of Cromwell
for a tyrant under the name of Stuart." Whatever vices
or infirmities those men might have had, they had not the
vices and infirmities of slaves or cowards—of quacks, of
liars, of renegades. One who lived among them and knew
them well, though he had the weakness to serve under and
to eulogise their treacherous destroyer, had learned from
his knowledge of them how to describe that firmness of
purpose which disdained submission *—that fortitude which
* “With Cromwell were associated,
in his Council of State, eight officers of
high rank and four civilians. The last
would seem to have been thrown in as
a convenient screen alone; for the
Council of State, so constituted, was, to
all intents and purposes, a military
council. It will scarcely be believed
that a desperate attempt was made to
secure, in the position of one of the
civilians, the name and authority of
Sir Henry Vane; for none knew better
than Cromweil, that any damage to
such a character must be self-
inflicted, and none more certain than
he that such co-operation, by any
argument secured, would altogether
avert the possibility of a popular
outbreak before his plans were ripe.
No argument was therefore forgotten,
no inducement omitted, to achieve the
services of the ‘juggling’ Vane. But
the manner of their reception became
his character. As he had treated the
insult, he treated the mean submis-
sion. From Belleau, his house in Lin-
colnshire, to which he had at once
retired after the 20th of April, 1653, he
wrote a brief answer to the application
from the Council, that ‘ though the
reign of saints was now no doubt
begun, he was willing, for his part, to
defer his share in it till he should go
to heaven.’”—Forster's Life of Oliver
Cromwell (vol. ii. p. 129, London,
1839) cites an intercepted letter of
Mr. T. Robinson to Mr. Stoneham, at
the Hague, in Thurloe's State Papers,
vol. i. p. 265.
* On the day before his execution
some of Vane's friends having at-
tempted to persuade him to make his
submission to the King, and by that
means endeavour to save his life, he
said, “If the King did not think him-
self more concerned for his honour and
word than he did for his life, he was
very willing they should take it.” And
when others spoke to him of giving
some thousands of pounds for his life,
he said, “If a thousand farthings would
gain it, he would not give them ; and
if any should attempt to make such a
bargain, he would spoil their market:
480
[CHAP. XVI.
COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.
disdained escape: |
“The unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome.””
In the same essay in which Lord Macaulay has so
for I think,” he added, “the King
himself is so sufficiently obliged to
spare my life, that it is fitter for
him to do it than myself to seek it.”
—State Trials, vol. vi. pp. 189, 190.
* When the Restoration came, Major-
General Harrison refused to with-
draw from his house and escape,
deeming that a desertion of his cause
and principles. He was accordingly
seized with all his horses and arms,
at his house in Staffordshire and
brought to London. He was then
committed to the Tower, and his horses
taken to the Mews for the King's use.
I have already described Harrison's
behaviour on the scaffold (Vol. I. pp.
79, 80). There is a touching simplicity
and earnestness in the few words that
he was permitted to speak on his trial,
where he saw the faces of brass of
Monk, Shaftesbury, and Holles on the
bench, among the judges who con-
demned him to death; “I would
not,” he said, “offer of myself the
least injury to the poorest man or
woman that goes upon the earth. I
did what I did, as out of conscience
to the Lord; for when I found those
that were as the apple of mine eye to
turn aside, I did loathe them, and suf-
fered imprisonment many years. I
chose rather to be separated from wife
and family than to have compliance
with them, though it was said, “Sit at
my right hand,’ and such kind expres-
sions. Thus I have given a little poor
testimony that I have not been doing
things in a corner, or from myself.
Maybe I might be a little mistaken;
but I did it all according to the best of
my understanding, desiring to make
the revealed will of God in his Holy
Scriptures as a guide to me. I humbly
conceive that what was done was done
in the name of the Parliament of Eng-
land, and that this Court or any Court
below the High Court of Parliament
hath no jurisdiction of these actions.”
—State Trials, vol. v. pp. 1024, 1025.
A more sincere, honest, and single-
hearted enthusiast than Harrison never
existed. There is in Lincoln's Inn
Library a small 4to. which contains,
besides the “Trial” and “Life and
Death of Sir Henry Vane" before re-
ferred to, “The Speeches and Prayers
of Major-General Harrison and others of
‘the late King's judges, with severaloc-
casional speeches and passages in their
imprisonment and at their execution,
faithfully and impartially collected.”
* I will give here two out of many
minutes in the Order Books, showing
that Milton's work was not confined to
foreign tongues: “That Mr. Milton do
go to the committee of the army and
desire them to send to the Council the
book of examinations taken about the
risings in Kent and Essex.”—Order
Book of the Council of State, June 22,
1650, MS. State Paper Office. “That
Mr. Milton do peruse the examinations
taken by the committee of the army
concerning the insurrections in Essex,
and take heads of the same, to the end
the Council may judge what is fit to be
taken into consideration.”—Ibid. June
25, 1650. See also Vol. I. p. 172 of
this history.
-,
1653.] CHARACTER OF THEIR SUCCESSORS. 481.
powerfully delineated the character of Shaftesbury, he has
made an ingenious attempt to trace the cause of the
difference between the leading politicians of the Long Par-
liament and the leading politicians who succeeded them.
The cause of that difference he considers to lie in the
difference between the moral qualities “which distinguish
the men who produce revolutions from the men whom
revolutions produce.”
If this be true—and if the moral qualities of Shaftesbury,
of Danby, of Churchill, of Jefferies, of Lauderdale, of
Claverhouse, were the natural fruit of the great English
Revolution—why then, it may be asked, did not the Ameri-
can Revolution produce an equally abundant crop of such
men 2 The answer is, that it would have produced such a
crop, if Washington had acted the part which Cromwell
acted; that is, if he had turned round, and made use of
the military power which he possessed to ruin the cause
for which he had fought, and the men with whom he had
acted, and who had entrusted him with that military power.
By such a proceeding he would have driven away, or
imprisoned, or destroyed (as Cromwell did) all the men who
had fought and acted for something higher than self; and
would have let loose, as Cromwell did, all the men whose
god was, like his own, “self in the highest.” It was the
gigantic villany of Cromwell which was the father of all
the villanies of the next two generations of Englishmen——
from the falsehoods and treacheries of Monk, who sold the
men who trusted him, and with them his country, to Stuart,
who sold it to the King of France; of Shaftesbury, who just
before the Restoration declared to the Regicides that he
would be damned, body and soul, rather than suffer a hair
of their heads to be hurt, and just after the Restoration
was one of the judges who sentenced them to death; of
VOL. II. I I
482 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND, [CHAP. XVI.
Lauderdale, who sold his Ring, and afterwards turned
round, and in the name of that King's son tortured his
former friends with iron boots and thumbscrews, to “the
hundred villanies of Marlborough.” And yet Cromwell
himself, who did all this, was one of the men who produced
the revolution, not one of the men whom the revolution
produced.
Such are some of the consequences of a great crime
committed by a great man. The civil wars of Rome, with-
out the termination which the success of Caesar gave to
them, might have been productive of many bad men, but
not of such fiends in human shape as Tiberius and Se-
janus, as Caligula and Nero, and their courtiers. Such
men were not the natural production of a revolution or
revolutions, but of the act of a man who, being entrusted
with military power by his country, turned that power suc-
cessfully against the country which had so trusted him.
As Thomas Scot said of Cromwell—“Faith was broken,
and somewhat else.” And when an incarnate lie is set up
and enthroned as the representative of a nation, that na-
tion cannot be pronounced to be in a very healthy or hope-
ful condition. -
As we look mournfully on the last page of these records'
of the labours of statesmen who, like the Roman Senate
of ancient days, had destroyed empires, and shown them-
selves more powerful than kings; and reflect that their
free and far-extending thoughts and counsels were to be
succeeded but by a troop of “creature colonels,” and by
the statesmanship of the barrack-room, we may say of
them and of their fate—Farewell the free debate, where
mind meets mind, and the result is determined by the
* I mean the last page of the Order different body from Cromwell's Council
Books of THE Council of State, a very of State.
1653.] CONSEQUENCES OF CROMWELL'S CONDUCT. 483
reason of the most powerful intellect, not by the domineer-
ing will of a man at the head of a band of soldiers l–Fare-
well the statesman-thought, the high design, which, seeking
something higher than self, commands the respect of free-
born men even in its very errors; and, far more than “the
plumed troop and the big wars ” of him whose god is “self
in the highest,” “makes ambition virtue !”
The consequences of Cromwell’s proceeding, by which he
had substituted for the Council of Statesmen a barrack-
room Council of “creature colonels,” soon began to show
themselves. Cromwell, in the hour of his extremity at
Dunbar, said, in that letter he wrote to Haselrig, “Let H.
Vane know what I write ; I would not make it public, lest
danger should accrue thereby.” It had not then occurred
to him to pray that “The Lord would deliver him from Sir
Henry Vane !” It was indeed in an evil hour, for himself
as well as others, that he so prayed—in that fit of insanity,
in which he blasphemously gave to the Evil Spirit who
had taken possession of him the name and attributes of the
Omnipotent. Had the voice of that Sir Henry Vane, whom
he loaded with Scurrilous reproaches, been heard, as, in the
days that could return no more, it had been heard in the
Council of State, the expedition against Hispaniola would
never have been undertaken ; or if, by any chance, it had
been undertaken, it would have been placed under very
different leaders from Penn and Venables. The expedition
was, in itself, a distinct departure from the policy of the
statesmen of the Commonwealth, who in all their measures
had observed those rules of “morality and common
honesty,” which Vane told Cromwell he had violated in
his expulsion of the Parliament. It was a positive viola-
tion of treaty, as unwarrantable as Frederic II.’s attack on
Silesia.
484 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
Cromwell had now, however, taken up his lot with
the common herd of robber-tyrants, who, provided their
villanies are successful, are hailed as gods upon earth.
And as one principal occupation of those lofty personages
is to rob one another, Oliver Cromwell bethought him, after
having so infamously cheated the English nation, of com-
mitting a robbery on a large scale on his brother and ally
the King of Spain, as the best method he could devise of
purchasing the freedom of the high company into which
he had thrust himself. But even there Cromwell failed in
establishing a parallel favourable to himself, “who,” as
Cowley says, “for his particular share of it, sat still at
home, and exposed them so frankly abroad.” Cowley
should have added, too, that he exposed them in a pestilen-
tial climate.” Napoleon Bonaparte accompanied his army
to Moscow. If Oliver Cromwell wanted the glory of foreign
conquest to gild over his perfidy and villany, he should
have accompanied his fleet to the West Indies, and shown
the world whether his genius and valour were equal to
the task of averting the disgrace which in that disastrous
expedition fell so heavily upon the arms of England.
Even after that disgraceful failure, the genius and
valour of Blake could still gain many victories and
triumphs for England, though Blake’s fleets were no
longer equipped and provisioned as they had been by the
great statesmen of the Commonwealth; and Blake’s own
premature death may in great part be attributed to the
* Cowley's Discourse, by Way of
Vision, concerning the Government of
Oliver Cromwell,
* For a description of their sufferings
from the pestilential climate, see Ad-
miral Penn's Journal, published in Mr.
Granville Penn's Memorials of Ad-
miral Sir William Penn, vol. ii. p. 56
et seq.-‘‘The fever and flux have
been so general,” writes Admiral Penn
to Cromwell, “that 'tis rare to find a
man that hath escaped either one or
both of them.”—Penn to Cromwell,
June 6, 1655, in Granville Penn, vol.
ii. p. 112.
1653.] THE GLORIOUS CAREER OF BIAKE. 485
culpable neglect of the usurper, who was too much occu-
pied with the intrigues for his own further personal
aggrandisement to pay due attention to the naval affairs
of the State. For Blake's death was certainly owing
to his health’s being thoroughly broken, by his being
kept at sea so long without intermission ; and his ships
were rendered so foul that, under any commander but
himself, they would have been quite unserviceable.
As I have said, none of the great spirits of the English
Commonwealth ever more acted with Cromwell—except
Blake, whose strong and noble passion for the honour of
his country still led him to fight that country’s foreign
enemies, and whose resistless energy, directed by the in-
stinct of genius, was such that, wherever he led, victory was
still his companion, till he “who would never strike to any
other enemy, struck his topmast to Death.” From Cadiz to
Leghorn, from Leghorn to Tunis, from Tunis to Santa Cruz,
his fleet held on its victorious course. To him, as to his
antitype of later days, whom England delights to honour,
while to Blake she has as yet refused even a tomb:—
To him, as to the burning levin
Short, bright, resistless course was given ;
Where'er his country's foes were found,
Was heard the fated thunder's sound,
Till burst the bolt on yonder shore,
Roll'd, blaz'd, destroy’d—and Was no more |
But the honour of the exploits of Blake belongs to himself,
and to the great statesmen of the Commonwealth, who had
first discovered his genius, and had created the powerful
navy which that genius led to victory. Very different, as
we have seen in the business of Hispaniola, was the
result when the genius of Cromwell was left to its own
I’éSOULI'CéS.
Plato and Tacitus have exhausted the powers of language
486 COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND. [CHAP. XVI.
in depicting those “wounds and lacerations” which the
minds of tyrants would disclose if they were laid open.
Some traces of those mental tortures may be discerned
even on their outward aspects, and sometimes where the
intellectual grandeur of the head and face renders the
effect more remarkable; as in that immortal marble, in
that look of the great Dictator, which is so instinct at
Once with mind and courage, as if a more than human in-
telligence shone through it, strangely combined with an
expression about the mouth of tremulous sensibility, and
as if the mind within were so powerful as to have preserved
a serenity showing no trace of all that stormy and eventful
past—of years of war, of toil, of mental anxiety, of bodily
suffering, of superhuman success—save something of an
air, partly stern, partly anxious, partly melancholy, which
may perhaps indicate remorse, and which seems to forebode,
but not to fear, a terrible fate. -
The great English Protector’s face is a far less intellec-
tual one than that of the great Roman Dictator, and I
have never seen any portrait of it which evinces any trace
of this look of anxiety observable in the bust of Caesar to
which I refer. But I have seen in the State Paper Office
signatures of Cromwell’s (“Oliver P.”) in 1656, which,
from their extremely tremulous character, betray either
very great mental anxiety or very great bodily weakness.
Could this be the effect of what is called remorse, or at
least of that torture of the mind arising from the uneasy,
the racking consciousness that he had committed a gigantic
crime in vain? These signatures are strikingly different
from his signatures of earlier days—even from his signa-
ture two years before, in 1654. As we look at these
tremulous signatures, and remember that the writer was
* The bust of Julius Caesar in the British Museum.
1653.] REMORSE. 487
not sixty years of age, we are tempted to ask, is this the
man whose adamantine nerves some ten years before, after
all the toil and excitement of the day of Naseby, could
still before he slept write that letter to the Speaker in
such firm, bold, and distinct characters? But when he
penned that letter, on the night of the 14th of June 1645,
his conscience was as clear as that which enabled Vane
and Scot, and Harrison and Sydney, to meet death with
such intrepid serenity. To have kept such a clear con-
science would have been far better for him while he lived,
and a far greater honour to his memory, than a dormitory
among the ashes of kings. If his saying on his deathbed,
when one of his chaplains, whom he had asked if it was
possible to fall from grace, answered that it was not possible,
“Then I am safe, for I know that I was once in grace,”
is accurately reported, it proves that he was himself con-
scious that he had deviated from the path of rectitude, of
honesty. In spite of all his long-winded and involved
sophistries to his Parliaments, he could not cheat his own
conscience: for his was one of those minds of which Walter
Scott says that, while Fear is the scourge of cowards,
Remorse is the torturer of the brave—Remorse, which the
Greeks personified under the name of the Erinyes, or the
Avenging Deities, and which, in the case of powerful
criminals, whom no other punishment can reach, half
avenges the wrongs of mankind
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IN DE X.
— — —
ABE
BERDEEN, cruelties of Montrose
at, i. 293–295
Admiralty, the Committee for carrying
on the affairs of, ii. 268, 269. See
NAVY
“Agreement, an, of the People of Eng-
land,” the writing drawn up by Ireton
and the officers of the army, so called,
i. 27-30. Treatment of, by the Parlia-
ment, 31, 32. John Lilburne's and the
Levellers’ “Agreement of the People,”
90–94. Question how far Ireton ac-
quiesced in the putting aside the
Agreement of the People which he had
drawn up, 211-213
Algiers, English captives at, ii. 385
Ambassador, Spanish, conducted to an
audience by the Parliament through
streets lined with the Ironside cavalry,
ii. 287, 288 -
Ambassadors, Danish, diet allowed
them, ii. 359. Permitted to kill veni-
son in Hyde Park and in Hampton
Court Park, 360
Ambassadors, Dutch, diet allowed them,
ii. 359. See DUTCH AMBASSADORs
Ambassadors, manner of giving audience
to, ii. 278
Amboyna, the affair called “The Am-
boyna Massacre,” ii. 285, 286
Antinomians, i, 77–80
Antrim, the Earl of, a commission
granted to, by Charles I., to raise an
Irish army to be employed against
Scotland, i. 131, 132
Argyle, Marquis of, i. 280 and note
Army, Parliamentary, the, i. 60. New
regiments raised for the service of
Ireland, 63, 64. Composition and
state of 72–77. Influence of pamph-
BAI
lets on the soldiers of, 83, 84. Com-
ponent parts of 95, 96. Representa-
tion of, to Parliament, in 1647, drawn
up by Ireton with the assistance of
Cromwell and Lambert, ii. 247–250.
Pay of, 412–414. Clarendon's cha-
racter of, 141
Army, Scottish, how raised and how
composed, i. 319–323. Strong posi-
tion of, under David Leslie, i. 343,
350, 351; ii. 143, 144. Moves south-
ward by rapid marches, 145. In-
vades England, 155. Totally defeated
at Dunbar, i. 360, 369; at Worces-
ter, ii. 195
Ascham, assassination of, i. 311, 312.
The Parliament insist upon justice
being done on the murderers of, ii.
288, 289 º
Aubrey, his account of Dr. William
Harvey, the discoverer of the circula-
tion of the blood, ii. 12, note. His
character of Thomas Challoner, 79,
720te
Avon, the River, important battles
fought on, ii. 187, 189
Ayscue, Sir George, ii. 103, 105. Cla-
rendon's character of, 272. Never
employed again after his engagement
with Ruyter, 346, 347
ACON, Francis, his peerage conferred
not for his merits, but for his de-
merits, i. 3. His account of Empson
and Dudley, ii. 15, note
Baillie, Robert, Letters and Journals of,
compared with Strafford's Letters and
Despatches, as furnishing an accurate
knowledge of those times, i. 271
490 INDEX.
CAES
a French fleet under the Duke of Wen-
dôme, 347, 348. Defeats the Dutch
admirals, De Witt and De Ruyter, off
the North Foreland, 349–356. Is de-
feated in the Battle of Dungeness, in
which he had only 37 ships, against
95 commanded by Tromp, 374–377.
Defeats the Dutch fleet in the Battle
of Portland, 396–407. Exploits of,
in the last ten months, 408. Effect
of, on Cromwell, 437. Neglect of his
fleet by Cromwell, compared with the
care of it by Vane, a complete proof
of the utter falsehood of Cromwell’s
charges against the Parliament of .
“delay of business,” 441,442. Glori-
ous career of, 485. His dead body
dragged from its grave at the Restora-
tion, by command of Charles II., 303
Bond, Dennis, nominated a member of
the first Council of State, i. 37. One
of the tellers for the Noes, on the
question of a New Parliament, ii. 233
Boyd, Zachary, rails at Cromwell's
soldiers to their faces in the High
Church at Glasgow, ii. 141, note
Bradshaw, John, Serjeant-at-law, ap-
pointed at first President of the
Council of State, i. 38; though after-
wards a new President was elected
every month, ii. 235. His answer to
Cromwell, when the latter came to
expel the Council of State, after hav-
ing expelled the Parliament, ii. 467
Bradshaw, Richard, resident from the
Commonwealth of England with the
Senate of Hamburg, ii. 24, note
Broghill, Lord, story told by, respecting
the commission under the Great Seal
produced by those engaged in the
Irish massacre, ii. 5, note. His ac-
count of Cromwell's will, by which
BAT
Bates, Dr. George, physician and pane-
gyrist of Charles II., gross misstate-
ments of, i. 345, note ; ii. 198–200
Baxter, Richard, chaplain for two years
to the principal Ironside regiment, i.
95. His account of Cromwell and
the Parliamentary army, 72–84
Bell, John, a Scotch Presbyterian
minister of the Gospel, “inclined
to think the murder of Sir James
Standsfield by his son was a violent
murder committed by wicked spirits,”
i. 276, mote
Berry, James, Major-General, i. 72, 75,
76
Black, David, a Scotch Presbyterian
churchman, says that God has given
the keys of the kingdom of heaven to
the Church, and that the clergy “are
empowered to deliver unto Satan,
and to lock out from the kingdom of
heaven,” i. 267
Blake, Robert, Admiral and Colonel, i.
50, 175; ii. 57, 58. Incident in his
last action, showing the height to
which he raised the naval power of
England, ii. 30, 31. His birth and
early life, 32–36. His character, 39.
His defence of Lyme and Taunton,
40, 41. Opposed to the King's exe-
cution, 49, 50. Appointed one of
the Generals of the Fleet, i. 50 ; ii.
57, 58. Letter from, to Crom-
well, 67, 68. Sent in pursuit of
Prince Rupert, 69, 70. Instructions
to, 73, 74. Additional instructions
to, 81, 82. Attacks the Portuguese
Brazil fleet, 88. Destroys Rupert's
fleet, 90–92. Captures four French
ships; the Scilly Isles surrendered
to, 103, 104. Exertions of, to obtain
prompt payment of the seamen's
wages, 229. Commission of, for 1652,
as Admiral and General of the fleets
of the Commonwealth of England,
296, 297. Resemblance of the cha-
racter of, to that of Nelson, 313.
First meeting of, with Tromp, 315.
Thanked by the Parliament and
Council of State for his victory
off Dover, 321, 322. His northern
expedition, 337–339. Blake and
Tromp, when preparing for action
among the Shetland Isles, separated
by a sudden tempest, 340–343. Blake
returns from the North, 344. Defeats
he had made Fleetwood his heir, 252,
770te
Broxburn, i. 354, 355
Burghley, or Burleigh, Lord, character
of, ii. 13, 55
AESAR, Julius, the evil in him more
easy to imitate than the good, i.
127. His own opinion of the conse-
quences of his proceeding—enume-
rated the evils which would ensue to
all mankind from his passage of the
Rubicon, ii. 453. He and Frederic II.
INDEX.
CAL
of Prussia were not deceived by the
shallow sophistries by which some
have sought to defend their actions,
ii. 453, note
Calamy, Cromwell endeavours to obtain
the concurrence of, and of others of
the clergy, in his plot against the Par-
liament, ii. 443,444. See SMECTYMNUS
Cambridge, University of, men dis-
tinguished in the Civil War of the
17th century, educated at, ii. 241,
242. A letter ordered by the Council
of State to be written to the Master
of Trinity College, respecting “such
students of that society as are willing
to go to sea in this summer's fleet,”
i. 59
Challoner, Thomas, a member of the
Council of State and of the Commit-
tee of the Navy, ii. 79. Aubrey's
character of, ibid. note. One of the
commissioners sent to the fleet after
the Battle of Dungeness, ii. 378
Charles I., the French ambassador's
opinion of his mental constitution, i.
17. Political effects of his trial and
execution, 34, 35; ii. 7. Contrast be-
tween him and Cromwell, i. 35.
Charged by the English House of
Commons with remissness in taking
steps to punish the perpetrators of
the Irish massacre, i. 132. Plans of,
for punishing his rebellious English
subjects, ii. 2
Charles II., proclaimed King by the
Scottish Parliament, i. 283, 284. Ar-
rival of, in Scotland, 310. Meaning
of the words “the King's exerting
himself in an action,” 343–344 and
note. His “spirit and vivacity,” 345.
Character of, by Buckingham, ii. 143.
Conduct of, in the Battle of Worcester,
ii. 195–198. False panegyric on, 198
–200. Escape of, to France, 202,
203
“Cheater” and “Cheat,” words derived
from the perversion of the office of the
Ring's escheator by Empson and Dud-
ley, ii. 16
Christina, Queen of Sweden, why she
said to Whitelock, “These Hollanders
arelying fellows,” ii. 388, note
Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, mis-
statements of, as to Sir Henry Vane, i.
83 note, ii. 168; as to John Lilburne,
i. 144; as to the Battle of Dunbar,
491
CON
(where, and in his History generally,
he charges the whole Scottish nation
with cowardice), i. 368, note; as to the
Battle of Worcester (where he under-
takes to prove that King Charles was
a brave man, and his army an army
of cowards), ii. 197, 198; as to the
character of Sir George Ayscue, 272.
His remarks on the Battle of Portland,
and on the Battle of Dungeness, ii.
406, 407. His character of the Par-
liamentary army, 141
Clerk, John, of Eldin, his book on the
subject of breaking the enemy's line
in a naval engagement, ii. 306, 307
and note (and see Rodney, LORD)
Cockburn's Path, the pass so called,
mistakes respecting it and Cromwell's
march, i. 330–338 .
Commissions to the Vice-Admirals of
|Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Sussex,
and Hants, to press seamen, i. 58,59;
ii. 325. See WARRANTs To PRESS SEA-
MEN and PRESS-WARRANTS -
Commonwealth, the name given by the
English Parliament to the Govern-
ment after the death of King Charles,
i. 25. The Government not a Com-
monwealth in the sense of republic,
33; nor strictly Parliamentary gov-
ernment, being without the essentials of
Parliamentary government, a second
chamber, and a Parliamentary opposi-
tion, 106, 107. That the style or title
should be, “The Parliament of the
Commonwealth of England,” 178.
Foreign enemies of, ii. 19, 20. Vigi-
lance of 23, 24. Alone against the
world, 25, 26. Work which it had
before it, 27, 28. The Commonwealth
flag, 59. Contrast between the Govern-
ment of the Commonwealth and Queen
Elizabeth's Government, 55, 56, 185,
186, 280–282. A treaty of peace
between the King of Portugal and the
Commonwealth of England, 88, 89.
Contrast between the Government of
the Commonwealth and the Govern-
ment of Charles II., 303, 304. End
of the Commonwealth, 473, 474.
Character of the Commonwealth-men,
477, 478. Character of their suc-
cessors, 479, 480
Contrast between the Council of State
of the Commonwealth and Queen
Elizabeth's Council, ii. 55, 56; be-
492
INDEX,
COO
tween the Governments of 1658
and 1651, ii. 184–186; between 1585
and 1652, ii. 280–282; between
165% and 1853, ii. 295, 296; be-
tween the Government of the Com-
monwealth and the Government of
Charles II., ii. 303, 304 ; between
Cromwell in 1647 and Cromwell in
1652, ii. 430
Cooper, Sir A. A. (afterwards Earl of
Shaftesbury), a member of Cromwell's
Council of State, ii. 477. Character
of, 477, 478,481
Council of State, the, formation of, i.
24. Persons constituting, 37. Powers
of 36. First meeting of, 40, 41.
Errors in political economy of, 62.
Conductof, in regardtofrée quarter and
billeting, compared with the conduct
of preceding and subsequent Govern-
ments, 64–66. Tyranny of, 69, 70,
150 and note. Business and secre-
taries and clerks of 116, 117. The
history of, furnishes a new fact to-
wards the formation of a science of
government, 118–122. Howit differed
from the English and American Cabi-
net Council, ibid. Numbers present
at the meetings of, 123. Business of,
163–172. Election of, for 1650, 178,
179. Went about its work in a dif-
ferent fashion from Queen Elizabeth
and her Council, ii. 55,56. Orders for
regulating the proceedings of, 77, 78.
Example of the tact of, 105,106.
Instructions of, to their ambassadors
in Holland, 117, 118. Vigilance of,
against the invasion of England by
the King of Scots from Scotland, and
by the Duke of Lorraine from Dun-
kirk and Ostend, 119–122. Election
of, for 1651, 146, 147. Energy, cou-
rage, and prudence of, on the invasion
of the Scots, and a threatened invasion
from the Continent, 149–151. Great
exertions of, 153–167. Disband the
militia immediately after the Battle
of Worcester, 217. Election of, for
1652, 234, 235. Orders of, for the
management of treaties, 283, 284.
Work of, in 1652, 287, 288. Ad-
vantages arising from the composition
of 293. Orders (not given before) for
regulating proceeding of 294. Great
energy and vigilance of, at this time,
(1652), 297, 298. Great exertions of,
CRO
to strengthen Blake's fleet, 322–324.
Care of, to seek for fit men, and never
to prefer any for favour, or by impor-
tunity, 358, Prompt and energetic
proceeding of, in the case of Captain
Warren, 366, 367. Commit a blunder
in sending twenty ships to the Medi-
terranean, 368, 371, 372. New Coun-
cil of State for 165%, 369, 370.
Great exertions of, to reinforce Blake's
fleet, 377-382. Their mode of dealing
with foreign Powers, 384. Labours
of, 386. Relations of, with foreign
Powers, 387–389. Orders of, relating
to the fleet, 390. End of, 467, 468
Covenant, Solemn League and,” how
viewed by the Scottish oligarchy and
people, i. 276. Words inserted in, by
Sir H. Vane, ibid. note
Crime, consequences of a great, success-
fully committed by a great man, ii.
418, 419 -
Cromwell, Oliver, nominated a member
of the first Council of State, i. 37.
Appointed Commander-in-Chief in
Ireland, 44. Richard Baxter's
character of, 81. His strange fanati-
cism, 82, 83 and note. His departure
for Ireland, 113. Allowance to, as
General in Ireland, 114. Takes
Drogheda and Wexford by storm,
135–139. John Lilburne's character
of, 156–159. Difference between the
amount of ability requisite to destroy
armed enemies, and that requisite to
overreach and destroy friends who are
off their guard, 161, 162. £2,500 per
annum in land given to him, 176. Cha-
racteristic anecdote respecting, 189,
190, 313. Appointed Commander-in-
Chief in England, 315. Invades Scot-
land, 318-328, 330. Finds Leslie's
position about Edinburgh “not to be
attempted,” 343. Having in vain at-
tempted to bring Leslie to an engage-
ment, retreats to Dunbar, 343–350.
Character of Cromwell as a gene-
ral, 352, 353, 357. His taste for
practical jokes, ii. 37, 38. His illness
in Scotland, 139, 140. His arrival
before Worcester, 190. Defeats the
King's army, 194, 195. Inconsistencies
of his character, and consequent diffi-
culty of analysing it, 218–220. His
alleged designs, 221. £4,000 a year
settled on him, in addition to £2,500
&
{
CRO
formerly granted, 222. His reception
by Parliament, 223. Why Ireton was
a check on his ambition, 252–254. His
children, 257–259. Calls a meeting at
the Speaker's house, and reopens the
question of monarchy or a republic,
which had been settled by Parliament,
263-267. Proof that till within a few
weeks of his turning round upon them,
he was keeping up the appearance of
being the sincere friend of Vane, Scot,
and Sydney, 393, 394. Effects of the
apotheosis of 419. Displeased and
alarmed by the Parliament's military
retrenchments, 421,422. Conversation
of, with Whitelock, in which he says,
“What if a man should take upon him
to be King 2" 427–429. Contrast be-
tween, in 1652 and in 1647, 430.
Answer to the worshippers of, 431.
Answer to the defenders of, 432–434.
Effect of Blake's victories on, 437.
Secures the cooperation of Lambert
and Harrison, 437, 438. Calumniates
the Parliament, 440, 441. Proof of
the falsehood of his charges, 441,442.
Endeavours to obtain the concurrence
of Calamy and others of the clergy,
443, 444. Alteration in his plans,
447,448. Meeting at his lodgings on
the 19th of April 1653, 449–451.
Illegal and treasonable character of
those meetings, 452, 455. Inconsis-
tency of a statement of his, 451.
first gets into a rage with the Par-
liament for not putting an end to
their sitting, and then gets into a
new rage when he finds them putting
the question for passing the Bill for
their dissolution, 459. Insults and
expels the Parliament, 461–464. His
madness was madness with method
in it, 465. His unproved assertions,
469-471;\which he could have
proved, if they had been true, by print-
ing and publishing the Parliament's
Bill for their dissolution, 472, 473.
His Council of State, 476, 477. Evil
consequences to England of his con-
duct, 483, 484
Cromwell, Bridget, Oliver Cromwell's
eldest daughter, character of, ii. 257
Cromwell, Frances, ii. 258, 259
. Cromwell, Henry, a conversation of,
with Ludlow, ii. 394 zº
Cromwell, Richard, character of, ii. 257.
... INDEX.
493
DUT
ANVERS, Sir John, nominated a
member of the first Council of
State, i. 37; but not re-elected in
February 16#3, 178
Deane, Richard, Admiral and Major-
General, i. 50, 175; ii. 57; 58, 192.
Appointed one of the Generals of the
Fleet, i. 50; ii. 58, 381
Denbigh, Basil, Earl of, nominated a
member of the first Council of State,
i. 37. Signs, as President of the
Council of State for the time, the
commission to Popham, Blake, and
Deane, to command the fleet, ii. 58
Denmark, King of, the, arrival of am-
bassadors from, ii. 359. Seizes a
fleet of English merchantmen, la-
den with naval stores, in the harbour
of Copenhagen, 360–362
Derby, the Earl of, defeated by Colonel
Robert Lilburne, ii. 181. Went
wounded into Worcester, 192. Be-
headed, 213
Despotism, progress of, in Europe, ii.
21, 22. Effect on the Romans of the
despotism of Julius Caesar, 416. A
good despotism is a false ideal, 417
Divine Right of Kings, the, ii. 7–14
Divine Right Nobility, i. 2, 3, 13; ii.
17, 18
Divine Right Tyranny, i. 16–18; ii.
11, 15, 16
Dorislaus, Dr., resident in Holland for
the Parliament, assassination of, i.
97, 98. Funeral of, 104
Down Hill, i. 353–355
Dragoons, difference between “Horse"
and “Dragoons,” i.44–46. Numerical
proportion of dragoons to horse about
1 to 6, i. 44 and ii. 154
Drogheda, storm of, i. 135–139
Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, cha-
racter of, ii. 14–18 -
Dunbar, Battle of, i. 357 et seq. The
only land battle in these wars (except
the battles fought by Montrose) in
which any great degree of generalship
was shown, 372, 373. Explanation
of the great disproportion between
the loss of the conquered and that of
the conquerors at, 389–392. Treat-
ment of prisoners taken at the, 378–
384
Dundee taken by storm, ii.214, 215
Dungeness, Battle of, ii. 374–376
Dutch Ambassadors Extraordinary, the,
494
INDEX.
DUT
received by the English Parliament
and Council of State with punctilious
courtesy, ii. 274–277. Audience
iven to them by the Parliament,
278, 279, 283. Depart from London
and act the part of spies, 335, 336
Dutch Government, the, character of, in
1651, ii. 114–116. Advantages of,
291, 292. Real cause of the war
with England on the part of, 308.
While they profess to desire peace,
prepare for and mean war, 310. The
Parliament charge, with attempting
to destroy their fleet by surprise
Aduring a treaty, 329–334
Dutch merchants, the, great loss of
ships and goods by, ii. 327, 328
Dutch prisoners in England, good treat-
ment of, ii. 363, 364
Dutch prize-goods, disposal of by the
Council of State, ii. 365, 366
Dutch war, the, beginning of, ii. 317–
320. Dishonourable end of, made
by Cromwell for his selfish purposes,
ii. 232
DINBURGH CASTLE, surrender
of, i. 385, 386
IEglinton, the Earl of, considered the
Stool of Repentance “the best seat in
the Kirk,” and therefore said he
should “always sit there for the fu-
ture, as he did not see a better man
to take it from him,” i. 269
Empson and Dudley, the escheators of
Henry VII., ii. 15, 16. Origin of the
word “cheat” or “cheater,” 16. Es-
teemed by the people as the King's
“horseleeches and shearers,” 15, note
England, alone against the world in
1651, ii. 25, 26. England's claim to
the honour of the flag, 309
Evanson, a captain of Whalley's regi-
ment, orthodox according to Baxter,
i. 74
Excise, amount of, for three years from
the Order Book, showing the great
exaggeration in Sir John Sinclair's,
and the much greater in Clement
Walker's account, i. 173
AIRFAX, Thomas, Lord, nominated
a member of the first Council of
State, i. 37. Resigns his commission,
GRE
as Commander-in-Chief, i. 314. Buck-
ingham's character of, ii. 416
Fanatics, honest, are not necessarily
honest men, i. 274, 275. Language
of the Presbyterians and Independ-
ents to each other, 324, 325
Fifth Monarchy men, i. 77–80
Flag of the Commonwealth, ii. 59
Fleet, estimate of the charge of the,
for 1650, i. 175. Revolt of a part of
the, from the Parliament, ii. 51, 52.
See BLAKE, RoPERT, and NAVY
Fleetwood, Charles, Lieutenant-General,
commands a brigade at the Battle of
Worcester, ii. 193. One of the Inns
of Court Life Guard, ii. 243 and note.
Appointed Ireton's successor in Ire-
land, 261. Lord Broghill's story that
Cromwell had made him his heir,
253, note
Fleming, Sir Oliver, Master of the Ce-
remonies to the Parliament, petition
of, ii. 357
Flintlocks, proportion of, to matchlocks,
i. 68
Fortescue, Sir John, Lord Chancellor
under Henry VI., in his work on the
“Difference between an Absolute and
Limited Monarchy,” deals honestly
with the passage of Scripture, with
which James I. and Hobbes have
dealt so dishonestly, for the purpose
of establishing the doctrine of the
Divine Right of Kings, ii. 9, 10,
700te
Frederic II. of Prussia's own opinion of
some of his actions, ii. 453 note
Frost, Walter, appointed Secretary to
the Council of State, i. 39. Salary of,
i. 117. Death of, ii. 299
Frost, Walter, the younger, son of the
preceding, Assistant Secretary to the
Council of State, i. 116; ii. 119. Sa-
lary of, i. 117. Continued in his
place on the death of his father, ii.
299
ARRISONS, reduction of, i. 113.
Retrenchment of, ii. 421
Grey, Thomas, Lord, of Groby, nomi-
nated a member of the first Council
of State, i. 37. A commission granted
to, “to command the forces of Leices-
ter, Northampton, and Rutland,” on


INDEX.
GRE
the invasion of the Scots, ii. 163–165,
and 163 mote
Grey, William, Lord, of Werke, nomi-
nated a member of the first Council
of State, i. 37; but not re-elected in
February 16##, i. 178
Guise, Dukes of, a branch of the House
of Lorraine, their affinity to the
Stuarts, ii. 4. Henry, Duke of, his
concern in the massacre of St. Bar-
tholomew, ibid.
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden,
was the first who introduced the use
of the cartridge, i. 167. None of the
Scots' regiments which had been in
the service of, were engaged in these
wars, though some officers that had
served under him were in the service
of the Scots' Parliament, i. 322,
323
AMILTON, James Hamilton, Mar-
quis of (commonly called Duke of),
one of the leaders of the party of the
“Engagement,” i. 258; all of whom
were brought to the Stool of Repen-
tance, i. 269, 270. His mode of levy-
ing men for his expedition into Eng-
land; many yeomen in Clydesdale
fled from their houses to Loudoun
Hill to avoid being pressed, 320.
Tried by a High Court of Justice and
beheaded, 48
Hamilton, William (brother and heir of
the preceding), was severely wounded
at the Battle of Worcester, and died
of his wounds four days after the
battle, ii. 194
Harrington, Sir James, nominated a
member of the first Council of State,
i. 37. One of those who always op-
posed Cromwell’s usurpation and ty-
ranny, ii. 444
Harrison, Thomas, Major-General, Roy-
alist calumny and scurrility respect-
ing, i. 77. His wild religious enthu-
siasm, and his daring as a soldier, 78.
His fearless demeanour on the scaf-
fold, 79. Was to Cromwell what
Murat was to Bonaparte, ii. 94.
Commands the forces raised by the
Council of State to oppose the Scots'
army, ii. 150, 151,153, 179. One of
the members of the Inns of Court
who, at the beginning of the Civil
495
HEV
War, composed the Earl of Essex's
life-guard, ii. 244. Conversation of,
with Ludlow, 438–440. The dupe of
Cromwell’s strong professions of ho-
nesty and saintship, 440. So that he
stoutly asserted “he was assured the
Lord-General sought not himself, but
that King Jesus might take the scep-
tre,” to which it was replied that
“Christ must come before Christmas,
or else He would come too late,” 445.
Cromwell's character of, “An honest
man, and aims at good things, yet,
from the impatience of his spirit, will
not wait the Lord's leisure,” 443.
Befuses to make his escape at the
Restoration, 480, note
Haselrig, Sir Arthur, John Lilburne's
charge against, i. 195 and note. John
Lilburne's charge of rapacity against
Haselrig, supported by a statement
of Sir Roger Twysden, ii. 424, 425.
One of those who always opposed
Cromwell's usurpation and tyranny,
444 note, and 452 mote
Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I.,
her name connected with the Irish
massacre, i. 132; ii. 4 and note. Plans
of, for punishing her husband's re-
bellious English subjects, ii. 2
Henry III., King of France, character
of, ii. 8, 12
Henry VII., King of England, employed
Empson and Dudley in oppressing,
“cheating,” and pillaging the people
of England, ii. 15, 16. Substituted
for the old English nobility a nobi-
lity composed of such persons as
Empson and Dudley, 17
Henry VIII., King of England, gave up
to the executioner Empson and Dud-
ley, ii. 15. But continued the work
of his father in oppressing, plunder-
ing, and degrading the English na-
tion, and in direct violation of his
promise, solemnly declared in Parlia-
ment, that none of the Church pro-
perty (which had become national
property) should be converted to pri-
vate use, but that it should be applied
to the necessary expenses of govern-
ment, and thus save the people from
taxation, distributed it among court
lackeys, cooks, and turnspits, ii. 239,
240
Heveningham, William, nominated a
496
INDEX:
HOB
member of the first Council of State,
i. 37. John Lilburne's letter to,
i. 147 and note -
Hobbes, Thomas, in his “Leviathan,”
undertakes to establish the doctrine
of the Divine Right of Kings by the
perversion and mutilation of the 8th
chapter of the First. Book of Samuel,
ii. 9, note. Though not the slave of
words, the slave of fear—a circum-
stance which, notwithstanding his in-
tellectual power, coloured and dis-
torted much of his philosophy, 110,
70te
Holland, relations of the English Com-
monwealth with, i. 102. Dutch ships
pressed for transporting troops to
Ireland, 103. The English ambas-
sadors, St. John and Strickland, in-
sulted in, ii. 112, 113. Character of
the Government of, in 1651, 114–116.
Papid rise of the naval power of,
289, 290. Advantages of 291, 292.
Real cause of the war on the part of,
308 *
Holles, Denzil, his description of the
Parliamentary army, i. 4, 5; ii. 141,
142. Belonged to the same class of
renegades as Monk and Shaftesbury,
ii. 480, mote -
Horse, difference between “Horse” and
“Dragoons,” i. 44–46. “Horse” to
“Dragoons” in the proportion of 6
to 1, i. 44 and ii. 154
Howard, Lord, of Escrick, charge of
bribery against, ii. 127
Hutchinson, John, Colonel, nominated
a member of the first Council of State,
i. 37. Was a member of the Council
of State for the first two years, but
not afterwards, ii. 147. Algernon
Sydney's character of, ii. 132
Hutchinson, Mrs., misstatements of, ii.
145–152, 151 mote, 256. Her ac-
count of Cromwell's children con-
sistent, 257
Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon. See
CLARENDON
NDEPENDENTS, difference between
them and the Presbyterians, as re-
garded military efficiency, i. 272-274
Inns of Court, the officers of the Parlia-
mentary army, members of, i. 6, 7.
Life-guard of the Earl of Essex, the
Parliamentary General, composed of
members of, ii. 243, 244
Interest of money, the attempt of the
Government to reduce by Act of Par-
liament, i. 62
Invasion of England and Ireland, pro-
jected, by an army under the Duke of
Lorraine, ii. 2–4, 119–122, 183, 184
Invasion of England by the Scots, ii. 155
Ireland, preparations for the expedition
to, i. 107–112. The Irish massacre
of English Protestants in 1641, 126–
133. Story told in Lord Orrery's
Memoirs respecting the commission
under the Great Seal under which the
Irish professed to act, ii. 5, note. Re-
inforcements for, i. 185–188
Ireton, Henry, appointed Lord Deputy of
Ireland, i. 189. Refuses a grant from
the Parliament of 2,000l. a-year in
land, ii. 221. Death of 236. Family,
education, and military career of 236,
241–245. His “Agreement of the
People,” 27–30; his “Representation
of the Army to Parliament,” ii.
246–250. Why he was a check on
Cromwell's ambition, 252, 253
Jº I., his misgovernment, i. 16.
His “True Law of Free Monarchies,”
in which he undertakes to establish
the doctrine of the Divine Right of
Rings, by the perversion and mutila-
tion of the 8th chapter of the First
Book of Samuel, ii. 9, note. His mur-
der of the Earl of Gowrie and his bro-
ther, which he called the “Gowrie
Conspiracy,” 14, note. Revived in
Whitehall the infamies of the Louvre
in the time of Henry III., 12
Jermin, Mr. Justice, may not give leave
to have his conscience to err, by allow-
ing the jury a quart of sack amongst
them, to refresh them, at Lilburne's
trial, i. 246, 247. His mode of per-
forming the duty of a judge, 241,242
Jones, Michael, Lieutenant-General, de-
feats the army of Ormond before Dub-
lin, i. 124,125. Death of,140. Character
given him by Cromwell, ibid.
Juggler, “the grand juggler” and “false
Saint Oliver,” names given to Oliver
Cromwell by John Lilburne, i. 156,
158, 160. Who was the “juggler,”
Vane or Cromwell? ii. 464
INDEX.
JUS
Justiciary, Chief, nature of the office of,
i. 8, 11, 12. Exercised the judicial
functions of the grand seneschal, or
Senescallus Angliae, 18. See SENES-
CALLUS ANGLLE
BLE, Richard, appointed one of the
Lords Commissioners of the Great
Seal, i. 25. The presiding judge at
the trial of John Lilburne, 142, 244,
245, note. His misstatement of the
law at Lilburne's trial, 244-246
Reble, Joseph, the reporter, son of
Richard Keble, i. 245, note
Ring, causes of the abolition of the
office of, in England, i. 16–18
Rings, the divine right of, ii. 7–14
Rings of Europe, the, all eager to join
a confederacy against the Common-
wealth of England, ii. 19–27
Rinsale Harbour, Rupert escapes from,
ii. 65
Einsale, surrendered to Blake, ii. 68
Enox, John, extract from a form of
Church policy framed by, “the ty-
ranny of priests is turned into the
tyranny of lords and lairds,”—i. 263.
Plan of, for the maintenance of a
national church, and also of hospi-
tals, schools, and universities, out of
the property of the Roman Catholic
Church, pronounced by the lords who
had seized that national property to
be a “devout imagination,” but vision-
ary and impracticable, 266
AMBERT, Major-General, grant to,
of £300 per annum, i. 110. Sees
the effect of the Scots leaving their
position on Down Hill, i. 359. His
reasons altered the opinion of the
Council of War on the night before
the Battle of Dunbar, and Cromwell
granted him the conduct of the army
next morning, 360, 361. Sent for-
ward by Cromwell, with a large body
of cavalry, to obstruct the march of
the Scots' army, ii. 155, 179. Ap-
pointed Ireton's successor in Ireland,
255. Quarrels with the Parliament,
259–261. His character, 261, 262.
Contrast between his behaviour at
his trial and that of Wane at his,
169, 170 * -
WOL. II.
497
LIS
Land forces, i. 60. See ARMY
Laud, Archbishop, character of, as dis-
played in the correspondence between
him and Strafford, i. 271
Lauderdale, Earl of, i. 282, 283; ii.
195, 214. Character of, 481,482
Lawers, Laird of, i. 254, 255
Lawyers, English, did not, like the
French, constitute a nobility of the
gown inferior to the nobility of the
sword, i. 6–12
Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of,
character of, ii. 14–18
Leslie, David, commander of the Scot-
tish army, but controlled by the Com-
mittee of Estates, i. 341, 342. His
prudent generalship, 343–346. Is
defeated at the Battle of Dunbar,
369, 370. Escapes from the Battle
of Worcester, ii. 199. Taken pri-
soner, 206, 208
Levellers, the, origin of the term, i. 89.
The Levellers' war crushed, 90–94
Lilburne, Lieutenant-Colonel John, com-
mitted to the Tower upon suspicion
of high treason, i. 71, 72. Petition in
his behalf gave offence to the Parlia-
ment, 85–88. His “Agreement of the
People,” 90–94. Preparations for his
trial, 141, 142. Clarendon's mis-
statements as to Lilburne's birth, &c.,
144–146. His letter to the Speaker,
154, 155. His predictions respecting
Cromwell, 156, 157. His description
of the stormy debates in the councils
of the officers of the army, 159. Calls
Cromwell “the false Saint Oliver,”
whose object is “self in the highest,”
156, 157. Trial of 191–251. Ac-
quittal of, 247–261. Lilburne showed
a more accurate knowledge of the law
than the Court and , the Attorney-
General, 200, note; 230, 235, 240,
244. Subsequent career of, ii. 270,
271.
Lilburne, Colonel Robert, petition of,
in behalf of his brother, John Lil-
burne, i. 146, 147. Another petition
of, 153. Defeats the Earl of Derby,
ii. 181
Lisle, John, appointed one of the Lords
Commissioners of the Great Seal, i.
25. Nominated a member of the
first Council of State, i. 37
Lisle, Lord Wiscount, nominated a
member of the first Council of State,
K. K.
498
INDEX.
-
=
LOR
i. 37. Eldest son of the Earl of
Leicester, and brother of Algernon
Sydney, ii. 129. Signs, as President
of the Council for the time, Blake's
commission for 1652, 297
Lorne, Lord, i. 256
Lorraine, the Duke of, projected invasion
of England and Ireland, by an army
under the command of, ii. 2–4, 119
—122, 183, 184
Loudoun, Earl of, i. 255, 256. Sat on
the Stool of Repentance in his own
parish church, 269
Iºudlow, Edmund, Lieutenant-General,
nominated a member of the first
Council of State, i. 37. His incor-
ruptible honesty and invincible spirit,
i. 317. His account of a treaty be-
tween the Duke of Lorraine and Vis-
count Taff, for the invasion of Ireland
loy foreign forces, to be transported
by the Dutch fleet, ii. 2, 3. His
description of Cromwell's flinging a
cushion at his head, 53. Recommends
Algernon Sydney to Cromwell as a fit
man to command the horse in Ireland,
131. His account of the invasion of
England by the Scots in August 1651,
150. His erroneous statement that
Cromwell dismissed the militia, 217,
218. Owed his appointment of Lieu-
tenant-General of the Horse in Ire-
land to Cromwell, 254, note. His
account of the life-guard for the Earl
of Essex, composed chiefly of members
of the Inns of Court, several of
whom were afterwards colonels of
the Ironside regiments, 243,244. Was
Commander-in-Chief in Ireland from
the death of Ireton till the appoint-
ment of Fleetwood, 261. Conversa-
tion of, with Harrison, 438–440. His
account of an action brought by
Henry Nevill against the Sheriff of
Berkshire, 444, note
ACAULAY, Lord, the opinion of,
that there would be no chance of
finding in a Cabinet of thirty members,
the qualities which such a body ought
to possess—unity, secrecy, expedition,
—disproved by the fact of the efficient
action of the Council of State of the
Commonwealth, i. 120–122. His
opinion as to the cause of the dif-
=
=
==
-
==
=
MOR
ference between the politicians of the
Long Parliament and the politicians
who succeeded them, ii. 479
Mar, Earl of his mode of forcing his
tenants into the Rebellion of 1715,
i. 320, 321
Marshall, Stephen, an eminent Pres-
byterian preacher, i. 181. His two
daughters, celebrated actresses after
the Restoration, 182
Marten, Henry, nominated a member
of the first Council of State, i. 37.
Grant to, of land, of £1,000 a year, i.
110. Moved the House that Lilburne
should be liberated on security, 141.
His saying of John Lilburne, 146.
His plea for the continuance of the
Long Parliament, ii. 231
Massacre of English Protestants in Ire-
land, in 1641, i. 126–133. £100
ordered, by the Council of State, to be
paid to Mr. Thomas Waring, “for a
book containing several examinations
of the bloody massacry [sic] in Ire-
land,” ii. 71
Matchlocks, proportion of, to flintlocks,
i. 68
Milton, John, appointed Secretary for
Foreign Tongues to the Council of
State, i. 47. Ordered that he shall
have lodgings in Whitehall, 172. A
warrant issued to him to view the
books and papers of Mr. Clement
Walker, ibid. Ordered to prepare an
answer to the book of Salmasius, ii.
72. Thanked by the Council for this,
270. Labours of, ii. 284, note; 480,
70te
Monk, George, General, some points of
resemblance between him and Crom-
well, i. 326–328. Commands a bri-
gade of foot at Dunbar, 364, 366, 367.
Stirling Castle surrenders to, ii. 214.
Takes Dundee by storm, 215. Ap-
pointed one of the Generals of the
Fleet, 381. Character of, 275, 276,
481
Montrose, Marquis of, i. 278-280. Mili-
tary genius of, 281. His last expe-
dition, 290, 291. Defeated and taken,
292. His cruelties at Aberdeen, 293
–295. His character, 295–297. His
house at Old Montrose, 297–299.
His sentence and execution, 300–305.
His lenity in 1639, 306–309
Morley, Colonel Herbert, nominated a

INDEX
MUL
member of the second Council of State,
i. 179. One of the tellers for the
Noes on the question of a New Par-
liament, ii. 233. One of the com-
missioners sent to the fleet after the
Battle of Dungeness, ii. 378
Mulgrave, Edmund, Earl of, nominated
a member of the first Council of State,
i. 37; but not re-elected in February
1643, i. 178
Muskerry, Lord, ii. 5
Musketeers, proportion of, to pikemen,
i. 66, 67
- AVAL abuses, ii. 228, 229
Naval tactics, “breaking the ene-
my's line,” not a discovery of the 18th
century, ii. 306, 307, 308, and notes;
and see CLERK, MR., PENN, SIR. W.
PEPYs, and RoDNEY, LORD
Navigation Act, the, passed by the Par-
liament, ii. 224. Policy of, i. 101,
102; ii. 224, note -
Navy, the affairs of, i. 49–52. Increase
of the pay of officers, and improve-
ment of the seamen's food, 50, 51 ;
ii. 228, 229. Abuses in the passing
of accounts, and paying of seamen's
wages, ii. 227—229. Distinction be-
tween the Committee of the Navy and
the Commissioners of the Navy, i. 49,
note. Estimate of the charge of the
fleet for 1650, 175. Committee of the,
ii. 29, 79, 268. Importance of, in
1651, 46, 47. Reconstruction of 57,
58. Increase of, 71. Thirty frigates
ordered to be built, 356. 1652, the
great naval epoch of England, 305,
306
Netherlanders, causes of the change in
the conduct of the, between 1585 and
1651, ii. 5, 6
Nevill, Henry, a member of the Long
Parliament and Council of State, one
of those who opposed Cromwell's
usurpation and tyranny to the last,
ii. 443, 444. Brought an action
against the Sheriff of Berkshire (who
had acted by Cromwell's order), for
foul practices at the last return for
that county, 444, note. Contrivance
of Oliver St. John, the Chief Justice,
to render the verdict of the jury in
that case null and of no effect, in
499
OVE
order to gratify his master Cromwell,
z - id
Nobility, the English, effect of the go-
vernment of the Stuarts in degrading,
i. 3; of the government of the Tu-
dors, by giving the titles of the great
historical families to “horseleech”
lawyers and court minions, ii. 17. At
the beginning of the 17th century,
though new and humble in their ori-
gin, they displayed the insolence of a
conquering caste, i. 13. Great change
between 1603 and 1649, 14. Some
of, who had the best means of knowing
the virtues of kingship, were members
of the Government called the Com-
monwealth, ii. 126, 129. The old Eng-
lish nobility, 237,238. The new Eng-
lish nobility, 239, 240
Nobility, the ancient English, wherein
it differed from the ancient Scottish
nobility, i. 263, 264 -
Nobility, the ancient Scottish, were un-
derstood to hold lands granted to
their ancestors for services done
against foreign invaders, and hence
the roots of the titles to their lands
were entwined with many heroic me-
mories, i. 264, 265. But the roots of
the titles of the Scottish nobility to
the Church property in Scotland, the
whole of which they seized, were en-
twined with memories of a very differ-
ent kind, i. 265, 266, 277, 383; ii. 241
()º Lieutenant-Colonel
Owen, i. 117, note
O'Neale, Owen Roe M'Art, the Council
of State gave Colonel Monk no autho-
rity to treat with, i. 117, note
O'Neal, Sir Phelim, i. 128. His cruel-
ties to the English in 1641, i. 130,
720te
Oeyras Bay, Blake's fleet anchored in,
ii. 86. Called at that time by the
English the “Bay of Weires," ii. 83
and note 2
Orrery, Earl of (Lord Broghill), his Me-
moirs quoted, ii. 5, note, and 252,
note. See BROGHILL
Overton, Richard, his pamphlet entitled
“Martin Mar-Priest,” and more of his,
abundantly dispersed among the sol-
diers, i. 83, 84. The author, together
K K 2
500 INDEX.
POR
of the falsehood of Cromwells'
charges against, 441, 442. Deter-
mine on an immediate dissolution,
445, 446. Meeting of, on the 20th of
April 1653, 456, 457. Violent ex-
pulsion of, by Cromwell, 461–464.
Departure of, 466
Parliament, “A Free,” cry for, ii. 174,
175
Parliament, a New, petition for, i. 149–
153. Question of, ii. 232, 233
Pay, of the Parliamentary army, ii. 412–
414. Extra, to two regiments “out of
the General's (Cromwell's) contingen-
cies,” 415 -
Pembroke, Philip, Earl of, nominated a
member of the first Council of State,
i. 37. Had the best means of know- ,
ing the character of the Court of the
Stuarts, ii. 126, 129, 130
Penn, Sir William, Admiral, story told
by, of Prince Rupert's cruelty, ii. 63,
64. His unsuccessful pursuit of Ru-
pert, 95, 96. His testimony that the
English fought in line whenever they
beat the Dutch, 306
Pepys, his description of the Cabinet
Council of Charles II., and of the
inefficiency of the Royalists in the
naval service, ii. 304. His report of
Sir W. Penn's statement as to fighting
£n line under the Commonwealth, and
“promiscuously, to our utter and de-
anonstrable ruin,” under Charles II., .
306
Peters, Hugh, proposed the burning of
all the old records of England, i. 39
Petition for a New Parliament, i. 149–
153
Pickering, Sir Gilbert, nominated a
OXF
with Lieutenant-Colonel John Lil-
burne, Mr. William Walwyn, and Mr.
Thomas Prince, of an “Agreement of
the People,” bearing date May 1, 1649,
90–94; and of “The Second Part of
England's New Chains Discovered,”
71
Oxford, University of, men distinguished
in the Civil War of the 17th century
educated at, ii. 241, 242 --
Pºiº great influence of, on
the soldiers of the Parliamentary
army, i. 83, 84. R. Overton's
“Martin Mar-Priest,” 84. John Lil-
burne’s “England's New Chains Dis-
covered,” i. 70, 71. His “Impeachment
of Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton,
Esquires,” 156, 157. His “Legal Fun-
damental Liberties of England,” 158,
159, 210, 211, 213. His “Sulva.
Libertate,” 214, 215. His “Agree-
ment of the People,” 216. His
“Outcry of the Young Men and
Apprentices of London,” 217–220.
His “Preparative to a Hue-and-Cry
after Sir Arthur Haselrig,” 220, 221,
70te
Parliament, the Long, composition of
the English peerage at the opening
of, i. 2, 3. Of the House of Com-
mons, 4, 5. Abolishes the House of
Peers and the office of King, 15–18.
Causes of their dislike of nobility
and kingship, 16–18. Errors com-
mitted by, 20–22. Number of mem-
bers composing, in 1649–1653, 23.
Call the government a commonwealth,
25. Their reasons for not dissolving;
their treatment of the “Agreement
of the People,” 31, 32. Tyranny of,
69, 70, 150 and note. Their new law
of treason, 143. Appoint an extra-
ordinary tribunal for the trial of
John Lilburne, 142. Their style
with foreign Powers, “The Parlia-
ment of the Commonwealth of Eng-
land,” 178. Their Puritan legislation,
180–182. Pleas for, ii. 230, 231.
Policy of, much sounder than that of
Cromwell, 348, 349. Endeavour to
countermine Cromwell by drafting
soldiers into the fleet, 436. Calum-
niated by Cromwell, 440, 441. Proof
member of the first Council of State,
i. 37. Algernon Sydney's character
of, ii. 132 --
Pikemen, proportion of, to musketeers, i.
66, 67
Popham, Edward, Admiral and Colonel,
i. 50, 175; ii. 57, 58. Instructions
to, ii. 83. Death of, 176
Portland, Battle of, ii. 396, 397. First
day's battle, 398, 399. Second day's
battle, 400. Third day's battle, 401,
402. Results of, 403–405. Effect
of, 406, 407 -
Portugal, King of, protects Prince Ru-
pert, ii. 84, 85. A treaty of peace
concluded with, on the conditions in-







INDEX.
PRE
sisted on by the Commonwealth of
England, 88, 89
Presbyterians, difference between them
and the Independents, as regarded
military efficiency, i. 272–274. Scot-
tish, 266–277. Proportion of, to In-
dependents, in the Parliamentary
army and navy, ii. 50. Character of
the expulsion of the Presbyterians
from the Parliament by the Inde-
pendents, as compared with Crom-
well's expulsion of the Independents,
455
Pressing of seamen, i. 53–59. See CoM-
MISSIONS, PREss-WARRANTS
Press-warrants, the, rigour of, shown
by certain warrants of protection, ii.
79, 80, 383
IPrevious Question, the, meaning of the
term, i. 179
Prideaux, Edmund, Attorney-General at
Lilburne's trial, his misstatements of
law and fact, i. 236–244
Prisoners, the, disposal of, after the
Battle of Dunbar, i. 378-384; ii. 204.
After the Battle of Worcester, ii. 203–
214. Good treatment of the Dutch
prisoners, ii. 363, 364
IPurefoy, William, Colonel, nominated a
member of the first Council of State,
i. 37. Treats Baxter in an imperious
manner; the remarkable terms in
which he spoke of Cromwell, i. 75.
John Iilburne's exception to Colonel
Purefoy as a witness against him,
221, 222
Puritanism in the 16th and 17th cen-
turies, ii. 11, 12. The Divine Right
of Kings party sought to brand with
the name of Puritan all men who
objected to “crimes natural, un-
natural, and preternatural, committed
by Divine Right,” 8, 12
Puritan Legislation, i. 179–181
Puritan Rebellion, twofold character of
the, i. 184
UEEN CATHERINEDE MEDICI,
Nº character of, ii. 9, 10
Queen Elizabeth, folly of, in the selec-
tion of a-successor, i. 183. Fascinated
by the idea of the divinity of king-
ship, ii. 8 and note. Tyranny of, 14.
Council of, compared with the Council
of State of the Commonwealth, 55,
501
SAI
56. Intemperate and capricious pro-
ceedings of, in the business of the
Netherlands, 185. Her inefficient and
tardy preparations for the Spanish in-
vasion, ibid. Her inhuman neglect
of her soldiers, ibid. Her government
at once imperious and feeble, 186
Queen Henrietta Maria, i. 132; ii. 2,
4, note. See HENRIETTA MARIA
Queen of Navarre, Margaret de Valois,
character of, ii. 10
Question of a New Parliament, ii. 232,
233
Question, the Previous, meaning of the
term, i. 179
EDUCTION of garrisons, i. 115
Regiment, ordinary strength of a
regiment of foot, i. 113; of horse,
&bid.
Ičetrenchment of garrisons, ii. 421
Rodney, Lord, his description of the
manoeuvres of outflanking and of
breaking the enemy's line in answer
to those who claimed for Mr. Clerk
the idea of breaking the enemy's line
as a new discovery, ii. 306, 307, and
7?ote
Rolle, Henry, Lord Chief Justice of “the
Upper Bench,” nominated a member
of the first Council of State, i. 37
Rupert, Prince, ii. 60–62, Story told
by Admiral Penn of his cruelty, 63,
64. Escapes from Kinsale Harbour,
65. Enters the Tagus, and is pro-
tected by the King of Portugal, 84,
85. His device for destroying Blake,
86. Escapes from the Tagus with
his ships, 88. His fleet destroyed by
Blake, 90–92. His luck in escaping
from Cromwell on land, and Blake at
sea, 92–94. His pretension to courage
compared with the courage of Blake,
Cromwell, and Harrison, 94. Penn's
unsuccessful pursuit of, 95, 96
Ruyter, Michael de, joined with De
Witt in the command of the Dutch
fleet, ii. 346. Defeated by Blake in
the Battle of the North Foreland, 349–
356 ; also in the Battle of Portland,
397–403
T. JOHN, Oliver, Lord Chief Justice
of “the Common Bench,” nominated
502 INDEX.
SAI
a member of the first Council of
State, i. 37. Sent ambassador to
Holland, ii. 108. Career and cha-
racter of, 108–112. Insulted in Hol-
land by the Royalists, 112, 113. Re-
called and thanked by Parliament,
123–125. His speech to the Dutch
commissioners at taking leave, 124.
An example of the way in which, as
Chief Justice, he sacrificed the rights
of the people, and violated the laws of
England, “to gratify his master Crom-
well,” 444 note. Supported Crom-
well's plot against the Parliament, 442
Salisbury, William, Earl of, nominated
a member of the first Council of
State, i. 37; one of the peers who
had the best means of knowing the
character of the Court of the Stuarts,
ii. 126. Present at the last meeting
of the Council of State, ii. 475
Seilly Isles, the, Royalist pirates in, ii.
98–102. Surrendered to Blake, 103,
104 * *
Scotland, state of affairs in, i. 252, 253.
Falsification of the history of, exem-
plified in Scott's account of the sale
of the King to the English Parlia-
ment, 253 et seq. The Laird of Law-
ers, 254, 255. The Scottish Par-
liament, 256, 258, 259. The power
of the nobility in Scotland the cause
of the poverty and democratical form
of the Scottish Presbyterian Church,
259–262. Difference between the
Bnglish and Scottish feudal aristo-
cracies, 263, 264. The whole of the
Church property in Scotland seized
by the nobility, 265, 266. Scottish
Presbyterians, 266, 267. Scottish
Presbyterian clergy, 268–272. Their
credulity in regard to witches and
hobgoblins, 276, 277 and note. Their
pretensions to superhuman power,
267. Their intolerance compared
with that of Laud, 270, 271. State of
parties in, 282, 283. Charles II. pro-
claimed King in, 283, 284. Rupture
of, with the English Parliament, 284,
285. The Scots' commissioners sent
home by land, 286–289. The Scot-
tish armies, how raised and how com-
posed, 319–323. Scottish villages,
339–341. State of parties in, after
the Battle of Dunbar, i. 387, 388
Scott (or Scot) Thomas, reports from
SOV
the committee appointed to nominate
a Council of State, i. 36. Called by
John Lilburne “their Secretary of
State,” 188. Had charge of the secret
service, ibid. and ii. 23 note; and also
performed the duties of Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, 116 note.
His plea for the continuance of the
Long Parliament, ii. 231. His last
words in Parliament, 474 mote; on
the scaffold, 411
Seal, the Great, broken in pieces in the
face of the House, i. 25. An Act
passed for establishing the new Great
Seal to be the Great Seal of England,
ibid.
Senescallus Angliae, in modern language
the Lord High Steward, the highest
officer in the State, being, as the King's
representative, chief administrator of
justice, and leader of the armies in
war, i. 8, 9. The judicial part of his
functions given to the Chief Justiciary,
the administrative part to the Lord
Steward of the King's Household, 10.
Confusion arising from deriving the
Lord High Steward from the Chief
Justiciary, 10 note. To the Carlo-
vingians and Plantagenets, this office
served as a steppingstone to the
throne, 13
Severn, the River, important battles
fought on, ii. 187–189
Shaftesbury, Earl of See CoopFR, Sir
A. A.
Sharpe, Archbishop, was at first for the
“Engagement,” but, finding it not a
politic game, brought to the Stool of
Repentance all his parishioners who
had shown the least inclination that
way, i. 270
Shetland Isles, the, storm among, sepa-
rates the English and Dutch fleets
when about to engage, ii. 342, 343
Skippon, Philip, Major-General, nomi-
nated a member of the first Council
of State, i. 37. Letter sent to, by
the Council of State, for keeping the
peace at Guildhall upon the trial of
John Lilburne, i. 143
Smectymnus, formation of the word,
i. 82, note 1
Soldiers, foot, sent to serve on board
the fleet, ii. 302, 391
Sovereign, meaning of the word, i. 7
and note

INDEX.
SPA
Spain, relations of the English Common-
wealth with, i. 99, 100. An ambas-
sador from the King of, declares the
substance of his embassy to be to
express the King of Spain's great
desire of a peace and good corre-
spondence with the Commonwealth of
England, ii. 288. The Parliament
insist upon justice being done upon
the murderers of Mr. Ascham, 288,
289. See AMBASSADOR, SPANISH
Steward, Lord High. See SENESCALLUS
ANGLIAE
Steward, Lord, of the King's household,
court and functions of, i. 11
Stirling Castle surrendered, ii. 214
Stool of Repentance, declared by the
old Earl of Eglinton to be “the best
seat in the Kirk,” i. 269. Archbishop
Sharpe at first for the “Engagement,”
but, finding it not a politic game,
brought all who had inclined that
way to the Stool of Repentance, 270
Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of,
effects of his government of Ireland,
i. 131–133. Character of, as dis-
played in the correspondence between
him and Archbishop Laud, i. 271.
Extract from a letter of Lord Cot-
tington to, showing the nature of
Charles I.'s government, ii. 106, note.
Difference between his character and
that of Sir Henry Vane, ibid. 169
Strickland, Walter, resident in Holland
for the Commonwealth of England,
recalled, ii. 107. Sent to Holland in
the quality of ambassador, with Lord
Chief Justice St. John, 108. Re-
called and thanked by Parliament,
123—125
Stuarts, the wretched and disgraceful
condition to which the misgovern-
ment of the two first, namely, James
I. and Charles I., had reduced Eng-
land, i. 16, 17
Stuart, Charles [Charles II.], proclaimed
traitor, ii. 171, 177
Style and title of the Government, “The
Parliament of the Commonwealth of
England, i. 178
Suzerain, effects of the modern military
despotisms in destroying the union of
the civil with the military character,
and in changing “suzerain '' into
“sovereign,” i. 7–12
Sweden, Christina, Queen of, why she
503
TWY
said to Whitelock, “These Holland-
ers are lying fellows,” ii. 388 note.
See GUSTAVUs ADoIPHUs
Sydney, Algernon, significance of the
fact that the Earl of Pembroke, Lord
Lisle, and Algernon Sydney were
Commonwealth men, ii. 129, 130.
Character of, 130–138. His opposi-
tion to Cromwell, Bradshaw, and
others, in regard to the King's trial,
and Cromwell's answer to him, 134,
135. Was present when Cromwell
expelled the Parliament, 460–463
AXATION, pressure of, i. 61. Taxes
levied by parties of horse, 62. Re-
markable illustration of, 104, note
Thomson, Captain William, chief leader
of the Levellers, i. 90, 91. Slain,
after a brave defence, 94 -
Thurloe, John, secretary to St. John and
Strickland, the ambassadors to Hol-
land, ii. 108. Appointed secretary
to the Council of State on the death
of Walter Frost the elder, ii. 299.
Salary of, ibid. Account of the collec-
tion of State Papers which bears his
name, ii. 314, note
Title and style of the Government, “The
Parliament of the Commonwealth of
England,” i. 178
Traditions, local, an example of the way
in which stories so called often origi-
nate, i. 332, 333
Treason, new law of, a blunder of the
Parliament and Council of State, i.
143. Made, what by the English
law was merely libel, high treason,
155, 156
Trial of Lieutenant-Colonel John Lil-
burne, i. 191 et seq. See LILBURNE,
John
Tromp, Martin Harpertz, ii. 311, 312.
First meeting of Blake with, 315.
Is defeated by Blake off Dover, 317,
318, 322. Tromp and Blake among
the Shetland Isles, when preparing
for action, separated by a sudden
tempest, 340–343. Defeats Blake in
the Battle of Dungeness, 375. Is
defeated by Blake in the Battle of
Portland, 397–403 -
Twysden, Sir Roger, testimony of, against
the Long Parliament, ii. 423, 424.
Does not affect the integrity of Ireton,
504 INDEX.
==
T=
TYR
Vane, Blake, Scot, Sydney, Ludlow,
and many others, 425, 426
Tyranny of the Parliament and Council
of State, i. 69, 70, 150 and note. Dif-
ference between the tyranny of the
Council of State and that of the Star
Chamber, 163
Tyranny of the Tudors and Stuarts, or
Divine-Right tyranny, i. 16, 17, 18;
ii. 11, 15, 16.
ION flag, the (that is, Saint George's
cross and Saint Andrew's cross
joined together), a proclamation of
Charles I., in 1634, prohibits any but
Ring's ships from carrying, ii. 58, note
Union, the, of England and Scotland,
and the abolition of monarchy in
Scotland, enacted by the Parliament
of England, ii. 225
ANE, Sir Henry, Junr., nominated a
member of the first Council of State,
i. 37. His fanaticism, 83 and note.
His genius as a statesman, and his
weight in the Council of State, 99.
His public-spirited conduct as Trea-
surer of the Navy, 172, note, 176 and
70te. The most active and able mem-
ber of the Committee of the Navy, ii.
29, 73, 79, 81, 269, 389, 390, 396.
In regard to his connection with the
Committee of the Navy, and with the
Committee for Irish and Scottish
Affairs, might be considered as Secre-
tary of State for War, 117, note.
Imputed timidity of, 168–170. Treat-
ment of, by Cromwell, on the 20th of
April 1653, 463,464. Answer of, to
an application to him to join Crom-
well's Council of State, “that he would
defer his share in the reign of saints
till he should go to heaven,” 478, note.
Words from his prayer on the morning
of his execution, 477. His solemn
appeal to God and man upon the
scaffold, 426. His answer to his
friends, who tried to persuade him to
endeavour to save his life by making
his submission to the King, or giving
some thousands of pounds for his
life, 479, note 2
Vane; Charles (brother of Sir Henry
Vane), resident from the Common-
WHI
wealth of England with the King of
Portugal, ii. 84, 87, note
Vendôme, the Duke of, defeated by Blake,
ii. 347, 348. Minute of the Council
of State, respecting a letter of, 384
Waſſº Clement, a scurrilous and
mendacious writer, i. 95, 172,173
Walker, Sir Edward, cited as an autho-
rity by Hume, for assertions made
without any authority, i. 344, note,
348 and mote
Warrants to press seamen, i. 58; ii.
302, 323, 324. See PRESS-WARRANTs
Warwick, Earl of, superseded as Lord
High Admiral, i. 49
Wauton (or Walton), Valentine, nomi-
nated a member of the first Council of
State, i. 37. One of the commissioners
sent to the fleet after the Battle of
Dungeness, ii. 378
Weires, Bay of See OEYRAs BAY
Wellesley, the Marquess, the opinion of,
that 13 was an inconveniently large
number for an executive council, dis-
proved by the fact of the efficient
action of the Council of State of the
Commonwealth, i. 120–122
Welsh, John, one of the Scotch Presby-
terian clergy, who arrogated to them-
selves some of the powers of the
Hebrew Prophets, i. 277, note
Wexford, storm of, i. 139
Whalley, Colonel of the Trusted Regi-
ment, to which Richard Baxter was
two years chaplain, i. 74–76. Baxter's
account of some of Whalley's troopers,
who were, according to Baxter, not
orthodox, 77
Whitehall, the Council of State remove
from Derby House, and hold their
sittings at, i. 101. Lodgings in, for
members of the Council of State, 171,
172. “The Broad Place at White-
hall,” ii. 157, 158; a body of cavalry,
“mounted in their defensive arms,” to
stand at, when the Spanish ambas-
sador is conducted to an audience, 288
Whitelock, Bulstrode, appointed one of
the Lords Commissioners of the Great
Seal, i. 25. Nominated a member
of the first Council of State, i. 37.
Why Christina, Queen of Sweden,
said to him “These Hollanders are
INDEX.
WID
505
ZEA
Scotch students among the prisoners,
201. Disposal of prisoners taken at
the, 203—214
Worshippers of success, the, ii. 410, 41.1;
of Cromwell, answer to, 431
Wylde, John, Lord Chief Baron of the
Exchequer, nominated a member of
the first Council of State, i. 37
ORK, James, Duke of, insults the
ambassador of the Commonwealth
of England in the park at the Hague,
ii. 113. Remarkable for the hardness
of his heart and the softness of his
brains, ibid. Anecdote, illustrative
of the quality of his brains, ibid, note
Zºº of the people in England in
favour of the Parliament, and
against the King, manifested in Au-
gust 1651, ii. 151, 172. Contrast
between 1651 and 1660, 173
lying fellows,” ii. 388, note. Inac-
curate statement of, 459 and note.
JPresent at the meeting at Cromwell's
lodgings, 449–457
Widdrington, Sir Thomas, i. 24, 25; ii.
449, 457
Witches. The Council of State, in answer
to an application from the Sheriff of
Cumberland, for special assistance in
the matter of witchcraft, reply that
they can, give him no directions con-
cerning the discovery or punishment
of witches, but refer him to the usual
course of law, i. 274. The judges
sent from England to administer jus-
tice in Scotland, found so much malice
and solittleproof against sixty persons
accused of witchcraft at the last cir-
cuit, that none were condemned, ii.
226
Witt, de, substituted for Tromp in the
command of the Dutch fleet, ii. 345,
346. Defeated by Blake, 349–356
Worcester, Battle of, ii. 10 et sºeg.
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