/Berkeley LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF V CALIPORHIA THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA FROM THE LIBRARY OF WILLARD HIGLEY DURHAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH I I92I-I954 Oliver Cromwell's / ( LETTERS AND SPEECHES IVITH ELUCIDATIONS THOMAS CARLYLE IN THREE VOLUMES Vol. L GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS New-York : 9 Lafayette Place london and glasgow CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PAGE lilAPTER I. Anti Dryasdust 1 1 p 11. Of the Biographies of Oliver i8 a III. Of the Cromwell Kindred 22 9 IV. Events in Oliver's Biography 32 „ V. Of Oliver's Letters and Speeches 59 CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. PART I. To THE Beginning of the Civil War. 1636-42. Letter L To Mr. Storie: St. Ives, 11 Jan. 1635-6 . . . .69 Lectureship in Huntingdonshire. „ IL To Mrs. St. John : Ely, 13 Oct. 1638 74 Personal Affairs. Two Years 81 Letter III. To Mr. Willingham : London, Feb. 1640-1 . . .83 The Scots Demands. In the Long Parliament 85 PART II. To the End of the First Civil War. 1642-46. Preliminary 91 Better IV. To R. Barnard, Esq. : Huntingdon, 23 Jan. 1642-3 , , ^9 A Domiciliary V' H CONTENTS PACK Letter V. To T. Knyvett, Esq. : Norfolk, Jan 1642-3 . , . 100 Parishioners of Hapton LOWESTOFF lOI Letter VI. Unknown: Grantham, 13 May, 1643 .... 104 Skirmish at Grantham ,, VIL To Cambridge Committee : Huntingdon, 31 July, 1643 . 106 Action at Gainsborough. WiNCEBY Fight 109 Letter VIII. To Col. Walton : York, 5 July 1644 . . . .114 Marston Moor. Three Fragments of Speeches. Self-denying Ordmance . • n? Letter IX. To Sir T. Fairfax : Salisbury, 9 April, 1645 . . .121 Proceedings in the Webt ; Goring, Greenvil, Rupert „ X. To Governor R. Burgess : Farringdon, 29 April, 1645 Attack on Farringdon Garrison. „ XL To the same : same date Same subject. „ XII. To Sir T. Fairfax : Huntingdon, 4 June, 1645 . Affairs at Ely. „ XIII. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Harborough, 14 June, 1645 Battle of Naseby, „ XIV. To Sir T. Fairfax : Shaftesbury, 4 Aug. 1645 • The Clubmen. „ XV To Hon. W. Lenthall: Bristol, 14 Sept. 1645 Storm of Bristol. „ XVI. To the same : Winchester, 6 Oct 1645 • Taking of Wincnester „ XVII. To the same : Basingstoke, I4 Oct. 1645 Basing House stormed. „ XVIIL To Sir T. Fairfax : Wallop, 16 Oct. 1645 Marching lo the West. 123 123 125 129 132 138 142 PART IIL Between the Two Civil Wars. 1646-48. Letter XIX. To Sir T. Fairfax : London, 31 July, 1646 . . .147 Adjutant Flemming. „ XX. To the same : London, 10 Aug. 1646 . . . .14.8 News : Commissioners to the King and Scotch Army h^VQ x%- turn«4. CONTENTS. PAGE Letter XXI. To J, Rushworth, Esq.: London, 26 Aug. 1646 , . 150 On behalf of Major Henry Lilburn. „ XXII. To Sir T. Fairfax : London, 6 Oct. 1646 . . .151 Staffordshire Committeemen. „ XXIIL To Mrs. Ireton : London, 25 Oct. 1646 . . .152 Fatherly Advice. „ XXIV. To Sir T. Fairfax : London, 21 Dec. 1646 . . .153 News, by Skippon : Agreement with the Scots conchided ; City disaffected to Army. „ XXV. To the same : London, 11 March, 1646-7 , . .156 Army-matlers ; City still more disaffected. „ XXVI. To the same : London, 19 March, 1646-7 . . .157 Encloses an Order to the Army, Not to come within Twenty- five miles of London. Army Manifesto . 15^ Letter XXVn. To Col. Jones : Putney, 14 Sept. 1647 . . .170 Congratulates on the Victory at Dungan Hill. „ XXVIII. To Sir T. Fairfax : Putney, 13 Oct. 1647 , . 171 Capt. Middleton, Court- Martial. „ XXIX. To the same : Putney, 22 Oct. 1647 . . .173 Col. Overton for Hull Garrison. „ XXX. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Hampton Court, II Nov. 1647 174 King's Escape from Hampton Court. „ XXXI. To Col. Whalley : Putney, Nov. 1647 . . .176 The same. „ XXXII. To Col. Hammond: London, 3 Jan. 1647-8 . . I77 Concerning the King in the Isle of Wight. „ XXXIII. To Col. Norton : London, 25 Feb. 1647-8 . . 179 On Richard Cromwell's Marriage. „ XXXIV. To Sir T. Fairfax : London, 7 March, 1647-8 . . 181 Has been dangerously ill. Free Offer 182 Letter XXXV. To Col. Norton : Farnham, 28 March, 1648 . . 183 Richard Cromwell's Marriage. ,, XXXVL To the same : London, 3 April, 1648 . . . 184 The same. ,, XXXVII. To Col Hammond : London, 6 April, 1648 . . 186 Isle-of- Wight Business ; King intends Escape. Prayer-Meeting 187 CONTENTS. PAkT IV. Second Civil War. 1648. PAGB Letter XXXVIII. To Major Saunders : Pembroke, 17 June> 1648 . 196 To seize Sheriff Morgan and Sir Trevor Williams, two Rebel Welshmen. „ XXXIX. To Lord (late Sir Thomas) Falrfa* t I>embroke, 28 June, 1648 ..*»»., 198 Siege of Pembroke. Preston Battle « ^ »...»*» . 202 Letter XL. To Lancashire Committee : Preston, 17 Aug. 1648 . 204 Battle of Preston. „ XLL To Hon. W. Lenthall : Warrington, 20 Aug. 1648 . 205 The same. ), XLlI. To Lofd Wharton : near KnaresboroUgh, 2 Sept. 1648 . 216 Religious Reflections ; Congratulation on public events and private. Declaration . . . . , , , , , . . 219 Letter XLIIL To Lord Fairfax, Berwick, it Sept. 1648. . . 219 Col. Cowell's Widow. „ XLIV. To Marquis Argyle, and the Well affected Lords now in arms in Scotland : near Berwick, 16 Sept. 1648 . 220 Announces Messengers coming to them. „ XLV. To Scots Committee of Estates : near Berwick, 16 Sept. 1648 222 His Reasons for entering Scotland. ,, XLVI. To Earl Loudon : Cheswick, 18 Sept. 1648 • , 223 Intentions and Proceedings as to Scotland. Proclamation 226 Letter XLVIL To Scots Committee of Estates : Norham, 21 Sept. 164S 226 In excuse for some disorder by the Durham horse in Scotland. „ XLVIII. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Berwick, 2 Oct. 1648 . . 228 Surrender of Berwick and Carlisle. „ XLIX. To Lord Fairfax : Berwick, 2 Oct. 1648 . , , 228 To have Sir Arthur Haselrig take care of Berwick. »> L. To Scots Committee of Estates : Edinburgh, 5 Oct. 1648 230 His Demands concerning Scotland. CONTENTS. t.—" — — ■ — ■ — PAGE Letter LI. To Hon. W. Lenthall : Dalhousie, 9 Oct. 1648 , , 232 Account of his Proceedings in Scotland. ,, LII. To Governor Morris : Pontefract, 9 Nov. 1648 ; r 234 Summons to Pontefract Castle. j, LIII. To Jeiiner and Ashe : Knottingley, near Pontefraci:, 20 Novi 1648 ........ 235 Rebuke for theit Order concerning Col. Owen, ii LlV. To Lord Fairfax : Knottingley, 20 Nov. 164^ . . 238 With certain Petitions from the Army. » LV. To Col. Hammond: Knottingley, 25 Nov. 1648 . , 239 Exhortation and Advice concerning the Business of the King. Death-Warrant . . • • .245 OLIVER CROMWELL'S LETTERS AND SPEECHES. tt INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. ANTI-DRYASDUST. What and how great are the interests which connect themselves with the hope that England may yet attain to some practical belief and understanding of its History during the Seventeenth Century, need not be insisted on at present ; such hope being still very distant, very uncertain. We have wandered far away from the ideas which guided us in that Century ; and indeed which had guided Us in all preceding Centuries, but of which that Century was the ultimate manifestation : we have wandered very far ; and must endeavour to return, and connect ourselves therewith again ! It is with other feelings than those of poor peddling Dilettantism, other aims than the writing of successful or unsuccessful Publications, that an earnest man occupies himself in those dreary provinces of the dead and buried. The last glimpse of the Godlike vanishing from this England ; conviction and veracity giving place to hollow cant and formulism, — antique ' Reign of God,' which all true men in their several dialects and modes have always striven for, giving place to modern Reign of the No-God, whom men name Devil : this, in its multitudinous meanings and results, is a sight to create reflections in the earnest man ! One wishes there were a History of English Puri- tanism, the last of all our Heroisms ; but sees small prospect of such a thing at present. * Few nobler Heroisms,' says a well-known Writer long occupied on this subject, ' at bottom perhaps no nobler Heroism ever transacted * itself on this Earth ; and it lies as good as lost to us ; overwhelmed ' under such an avalanche of Human Stupidities as no Heroism before 'ever did. Intrinsically and extrinsically it may be considered inac- * cessible to these generations. Intrinsically, the spiritual purport of ' it has become inconceivable, incredible to the modern mind. Ex- ' trinsically, the documents and records of it, scattered waste as a ' shoreless chaos, are not legible. They He there, printed, written, to ' the extent of tons and square miles, as shot-rubbish ; unedited, un- ' sorted, not so much as indexed ; full of every conceivable confusion ; * — yielding light to very few; yielding darkness, in several sorts, to * very many. Dull Pedantry, conceited idle Dilettantism, — prurient * Stupidity in what shape soever, — is darkness and not light I There 14 INTRODUCTION. * are from Thirty to Fifty Thousand unread Pamphlets of the Civil ' War in the British Museum alone : huge piles of mouldering wreck, * wherein, at the rate of perhaps one pennyweight per ton, lie things * memorable. They lie preserved there, waiting happier days ; under * present conditions they cannot, except for idle purposes, for dilettante * excerpts and such like, be got examined. The Rushworths, Whit- *lockes, Nalsons, Thurloes ; enormous folios, these and many others, * they have been printed, and some of them again printed, but never * yet edited, — edited as you edit wagonloads of broken bricks and dry * mortar, simply by tumbling up the wagon ! Not one of those mon- *strous old volumes has so much as an available Index. It is the * general rule of editing on this matter. If your editor correct the 'press, it is an honourable distinction to him. Those dreary old * records were compiled at first by Human Insight, in part ; and in * great part, by Human Stupidity withal ;— but then it was by Stupidity * in a laudable diligent state, and doing its best ; which was some- * thing : — and, alas, they have been successively elaborated by Human * Stupidity in the idle state, falhng idler and idler, and only pretend- ing to be diligent ; whereby now, for us, in these late days, they have * grown very dim indeed ! To Dryasdust Printing-Societies, and such * like, they afford a sorrowful kind of pabulum ; but for all serious * purposes, they are as if non-extant ; might as well, if matters are to 'rest as they are, not have been written or printed at all. The sound * of them is not a voice, conveying knowledge or memorial of any * earthly or heavenly thing ; it is a wide-spread inarticulate slumberous * mumblement, issuing as if from the lake of Eternal Sleep. Crav- * ing for oblivion, for abolition and honest silence, as a blessing in * comparison ! 'This then,' continues our impatient friend, 'is the Elysium we * English have provided for our Heroes ! The Rushworthian Elysium. * Dreariest continent of shot-rubbish the eye ever saw. Confusion * piled on confusion to your utmost horizon's edge : obscure, in lurid ' twilight as of the shadow of Death ; tracklets, without index, with- 'out finger-post, or mark of any human foregoer ; — where your human 'footstep, if you are still human, echoes bodeful through the gaunt 'solitude, peopled only by somnambulant Pedants, Dilettants, and ' doleful creatures, by phantasms, errors, inconceivabilities, by Night- ' mares, pasteboard Norroys, griffins, wiverns, and chimeras dire ! ' There, all vanquished, overwhelmed under such waste lumber-moun- ' tains, the wreck and dead ashes of some six unbelieving generations, ' does the Age of Cromwell and his Puritans lie hidden from us. This ' is what we, for our share, have been able to accomplish towards ' keeping our Heroic Ones in memory. By way of sacred poet they ' have found voluminous Dryasdust, and his Collections and Philoso- ' phical Histories. ' To Dryasdust, who wishes merely to compile torpedo Histories of ' the philosophical or other sorts, and gain immortal laurels for him- ' self by writing about it and about it, all this is sport ; but to us who ' struggle piously, passionately, to behold, if but in glimpses, the faces 'of our vanished Fathers, it is death ! — Dryasdust, my voluminous * friend, had Human Stupidity continued in the diligent state, think ANTI-DRYASDUST. 13 you it had ever come to this ? Surely at least you might have made an Index for these huge books! Even your genius, had you been ' faithful, was adequate to that. Those thirty thousand or fifty thou- ' sand old Newspapers and Pamphlets of the King's Library, it is ' you, my voluminous friend, that should have sifted them, many long 'years ago. Instead of droning out these melancholy scepticisms, ' constitutional philosophies, torpedo narratives, you should have • sifted those old stacks of pamphlet matter for us, and have had the * metal grains lying here accessible, and the dross-heaps lying there ' avoidable ; you had done the human memory a service thereby ; 'some human remembrance of this matter had been more pos- ♦ sible ! ' Certainly this description does not want for emphasis : but all in- genuous inquirers into the Past will say there is too much truth in it. Nay, in addition to the sad state of our Historical Books, and what indeed is fundamentally the cause and origin of that, our common spiritual notions, if any notion of ours may still deserve to be called spiritual, are fatal to a right understanding of that Seventeenth Cen- tury. The Christian Doctrines which then dwelt ahve in every heart, have now in a manner died out of all hearts, — very mournful to be- hold ; and are not the guidance of this world any more. Nay worse still, the Cant of them does yet dwell alive with us, little doubting that it is Cant ; — in which fatal intermediate state the Eternal Sacred- nes3 of this Universe itself, of this Human Life itself, has fallen dark to the most of us, and we think that too a Cant and a Creed. Thus the old names suggest new things to us, — not august and divine, but hypocritical, pitiable, detestable. The old names and similitudes of belief still circulate from tongue to tongue, though- now in such a ghastly condition : not as commandments of the Living God, which we must do, or perish eternally ; alas, no, as something very different from that ! Here properly lies the grand unintelligibility of the Seventeenth Century for us. From this source has proceeded our maltreatment of it, our miseditings, miswritings, and all the other * avalanche of Human Stupidity,' wherewith, as our impatient friend complains, we have allowed it to be overwhelmed. We have allowed some other things to be overwhelmed ! Would to Heaven that were the worst fruit we had gathered from our Unbelief and our Cant of Belief ! — Our impatient friend continues : ' I have known Nations altogether destitute of printer's-types and learned appliances, with nothing better than old songs, monumental stone-heaps and Quipo-thrums to keep record by, who had truer memory of their memorable things than this ! Truer memory, I say : for at least the voice of their Past Heroisms, if indistinct, and all awry as to dates and statistics, was still melodious to those Nations. The body of it might be dead enough ; but the soul of it, partly harmonised, put in real accordance with the " Eternal Melo- dies," was alive to all hearts, and could not die. The memory of their ancient Brave Ones did not rise like a hideous huge leaden vapour, an amorphous emanation of Chaos, like a petrifying Medusa Spectre, on those poor Nations : no, but like a Heaven's Apparition, which it was^ it still stood radiapt beneficent before all hearts, call- 14 INTRODUCTION, : ing all hearts to emulate it, and the recognition of it was a Psalm and Song. These things will require to be practically meditated by and by. Is human Writing, then, the art of burying Heroisms, and highest Facts, in Chaos ; so that no man shall henceforth contem- plate them without horror and aversion, and danger of locked-jaw ? What does Dryasdust consider that he was born for ; that paper and ink were made for ? ' It is very notable, and leads to endless reflections, how the Greeks had their living I/md where we have such a deadly indescribable Croniwelliad. The old Pantheon^ home of all the gods, has become a Peerage-Book, — with black and white surplice-controversies super- added, not unsuitably. The Greeks had their Homers, Hesoids, where we have our Rymers, Rushworths, our Norroys, Garter-Kings, and Bishops Cobweb. Very notable, I say. By the genius, wants and instincts and opportunities of the one People, striving to keep themselves in mind of what was memorable, there had fashioned itself, in the effort of successive centuries, a Homer's Iliad ; by those of the other People, in successive centuries, a Collins' s Peerage im- proved by Sir Egerton Brydges. By their Pantheons ye shall know them! Have not we English a talent for Silence.'* Our very Speech and Printed-Speech, such a force of torpor dwelling in it, is properly a higher power of Silence. There is no Silence like the Speech you cannot listen to without danger of locked-jaw ! Given a divine Heroism, to smother it well in human Dulness, to touch it with the mace of Death, so that no human soul shall henceforth recognise it for a Heroism, but all souls shall fly from it as from a chaotic Tor- por, an Insanity and Horror, — I will back our English genius against the world in such a problem ! Truly we have done great things in that sort ; down from Norman William all the way, and earlier : and to the English mind at this hour, the past History of England is little other than a dull dismal labyrinth, in which the English mind if candid will confess that it has found of knowable (meaning even conceivable), of loveable, or memorable — next to nothing. As if we had done no brave thing at all in this Earth ; — as if not Men but Nightmares had written of our History ! The English, one can discern withal, have been perhaps as brave a People as their neighbours ; perhaps, for Valour of Action and true hard labour in this Earth, since brave Peoples were first made in it, there has been none braver anywhere or anywhen : — but also, it must be owned, in Stupidity of Speech they have no fellow ! What can poor English Heroisms do in such case, but fall torpid into the domain of the Nightmares t For of a truth, Stupidity is strong, most strong : as the Poet Schiller sings, "Against Stupidity the very gods fight unvictorious ; " there is in it a placid inexhaustibility, a calm viscous infinitude, which will baffle even the gods,— which will say calmly, " Try all your lightnings here ; see whether I cannot quench them I " " Mit der Dummheit kampfen Gotter selbst vergebens."* Has our friend forgotten that it is Destiny withal as well as * Stupidity ;' that such is the case - more or less with Human History ANTI-DRYASDUST. 15 always ! By very nature it is a labyrinth and chaos, this that we call Human History ; an abatis of trees and brushwood, a world-wide jungle, at once growing and dying. Under the green foliage and blossoming fruit-trees of Today, there lie, rotting slower or faster, the forests of all other Years and Days. Some have rotted fast, plants of annual growth, and are long since quite gone to inorganic mould ; others are like the aloe, growths that last a thousand or three thousand years. You will find them in all stages of decay and preservation ; down deep to the beginnings of the History of Man. Think where our Alphabetic Letters came from, where our Speech itself came from ; the Cookeries we live by, the Masonries we lodge under ! You will find fibrous roots of this day's Occurrences among the dust of Cadmus and Trismegistus, of Tubalcain and Triptolemus ; the tap- roots of them are with Father Adam himself and the cinders of Eve's first fire ! At bottom, there is no perfect History ; there is none such conceivable. All past Centuries have rotted down, and gone confusedly dumb and quiet, even as that Seventeenth is now threatening to do. His- tories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul ! For the leafy blossoming Present Time springs from the whole Past, remembered and unrememberable, so confusedly as we say : — and truly the Art of History, the grand difference be- tween a Dryasdust and a sacred Poet, is very much even this : To distinguish well what does still reach to the surface, and is alive and frondent for us ; and what reaches no longer to the surface, but moulders safe underground, never to send forth leaves or fruit for mankind any more : of the former we shall rejoice to hear ; to hear of the latter will be an affliction to us ; of the latter only Pedants and Dullards, and disastrous w